2020: The Dawn of The Geri Birding Renaissance

California Scrub-Jays were daily yard visitors for a good part of the summer but are currently all but undetectable from the yard, although they are certainly still nearby. It is fascinating getting to learn some of the habits and vagaries of local common shit that you thought you knew like the back of your hand already. All photos in this post were taken at Rancho de Bastardos.

Geri Birding. Now, more than ever, it matters. BB&B readers know that we have always been staunch proponents of Geri Birding, whether you are doing it in your own backyard or at some lodge buried deep in a rainforest. But with the arrival of Covid-19, Geri Birding went from a pastime to somewhat of a necessity, at least for a while.

Do you remember those days in early spring? Here in Santa Clara County, California, we went straight from business-as-usual 😎to shelter-in-place 😷practically overnight, pretty much before the rest of the country. Fear and confusion and anger reigned supreme...and I guess that really hasn't changed, though the shock has certainly worn off. But I digress...it was a gut punch any way you look at it.

Back then, "wear a fucking mask" was not a thing. The thing was "don't leave your fucking house"...although no one was actually saying it quite like that then, or now, because that's not something anyone can tolerate for very long, potential life saving action be damned. There is a reason house arrest is a thing. However, that was indeed the message being sent by some birders for a little while. Birders were taking to listservs and social media, courageously proclaiming to all that would listen that they refused to chase mega rarities 15 minutes away and bashing all who did.

A big change in the yard this year was the Nuttall's Woodpeckers finally getting hooked on the suet. After being very occasional visitors to the feeding station they now visit on the regular. I've seen a great many of these in my life but can now say the best looks I've ever had of them were in my own yard. Here is a juvenile showing its distinctive red forecrown.

You may think I am cusp of delivering some harsh judgement, one way or the other, or am on the verge of launching into a long and rambling self-righteous screed on how birders should now conduct themselves in The Age of Coronavirus...but I am not. I am just setting the stage to tell you that I sure as shit have spent a lot more time at home than usual this year, and the best part of that has been GERI BIRDING.

As soon as things went south in March, I began geri birding with renewed vigor and have not stopped...never stop geri birding, you know what I'm saying? Can't stop won't stop geri birding. The results have been very rewarding, and Rancho de Bastardos has performed as advertised. I geri birded so hard this spring that I suspect I may actually now be geri. I catch myself doing stuff like complaining about my back, unironically yelling dad cliches at my daughter, and asking basic, embarrassing questions like "Honey, have you seen my keys?" or "What the fuck is Tiktok?"

I know right? It's a bad scene, but I am not ashamed. Geri birding makes hanging out at home a much more enjoyable, perhaps even more gripping experience than normal, especially in semi-normal weather conditions (i.e. under 100 degrees and without a megafire raging nearby) and in spite of things happening in the rest of the world that are trying their best to send you spiraling into a state of catatonic depression that you will never climb out of ever again.

Another major yard upgrade this year was the addition of this little oriole feeder. I wasn't sure how birds would take to it but the neighborhood Hooded Orioles love it. I even saw chickadees and a Song Sparrow or two using it.

The Hooded Orioles here have always been skittish, especially males. It's like they know how facemelting they are and don't want to hurt anyone by letting them get too good of a look. I got some deec pics this summer though. They have all departed now and are southbound, but we had some good hangs this year.

How about some more babies? Here is a juv Oak Titmouse. They are much more confiding than adults, usually look a touch spiffier and have more of a cowlick than a very prominent crest.

A young Northern Mockingbird can do a very convincing Sage Thrasher impersonation.

One afternoon we had a big family group of Tree Swallows perched above the backyard with a bunch of fresh brown and white juvs still getting fed by parents. This is a local breeder that disappears very early in the year - I have no eBird records of them from the yard past June. Like the jays that opened up this post, they are certainly in the area longer than that but I do find it interesting that they are dependably absent from my microzone by July.

This was a big year for Song Sparrows in the yard, the local breeders produced some bumper crops of youngsters like this one. On some days there would be an actual double-digit pure flock of Song Sparrows in the yard, which I am not accustomed to seeing anywhere.

This Cooper's Hawk is not a baby at all anymore but not a grownup either. In fact, it doesn't get much more intermediate than this, look at all those adult feathers coming in and that orange eye. Raptor highlights so far this year include more Sharp-shinneds than ever before, both eagle species (annual but always appreciated), and a banded Peregrine Falcon trying to kill Forster's Terns (after failing, killed a passerine instead).

As of this writing I am up to 113 species seen or heard from Rancho de Bastardos this year - my single year record of 126 species, set in 2018, seems well within reach but topping it is not a certainty either. El Rancho has been endowed with 7 new species in 2020: Scaly-breasted Munia (expected and disappointing), Willet (a calling nocturnal spring migrant, astonishing and rather rare in the county away from South San Francisco Bay/salt ponds), Swainson's Thrush (overdue, finally heard some nocturnal flight calls this spring), Western Kingbird (spring migrant, a pleasant surprise), Western Wood-Pewee (a not unexpected but very appreciated spring migrant), and Wrentit. The Wrentit is something I might hear sing from the riparian along the nearby creek at some point, but I was amazed to both hear and see a pair in my actual yard one midsummer day. My yard is decidedly terrible Wrentit habitat, but perhaps better than I thought? That leaves one more new yard bird... 

Red-winged Blackbirds have always nested in the pond behind my house but this year they decided to get real familiar with my yard in 2020, possibly because of a newish feeder that they could be more comfortable on. In previous summers they would disappear by the end of June but this year they have stuck around, and in greater numbers. Not only was it nice to have them linger and loiter longer, they helped lure in my newest yard bird.

I was astonished to look outside one day and see this thing going to seed town (Seed Town?) on the platform feeder one day with the local Red-winged flock. I'd only ever seen one in the county before, and here was a bright male right in the yard...in July! THIS IS WHY I GERI BIRD. This was both a new yard bird (obvi) and a new 5MR bird too, which made it that much sweeter.

The Yellow-headed Blackbird made itself at home very quickly and visited the yard a number of times a day, bossing around other birds, calling frequently and settling in near the top of the yard bird hierarchy. So, so sick. This is not the rarest bird that has been in the yard, but I am left wondering if things will ever be the same.

A surprising number of birders came out to the Los Capitancillos Ponds to chase it, most of which eventually had success. Apparently, scoping into my yard from the other side of the ponds became a thing people were actually doing.

If you don't already geri bird with zeal, I do recommend giving it a shot. I know not everyone has a living situation where this is possible, or your shitty apartment is simply too urban to be conducive to this...I have lived in those situations for most of my adult life. Trust me, I've skipped a lot of articles and posts about yard birding over the years, had my eyes glaze over when yard birding makes its way into conversation, but we must face the music...the time for geri birding is now. Have you felt The Long Shadow of Senescence slowly creeping over you? Let go of your fears, of your wasted youth, and your journey towards the Geri Side will be complete. Birders everywhere have finally made some effort to really bird their yards for the first time this year and have reaped the rewards. What better time to start than September? 

To you grizzled veteran geri birders out there, I hope your yards have brought you similar good fortune in 2020. This has been the year to really cement our geri birding legacies, right? As much as I look forward to having property of my own so I can go crazy with planting natives and installing an imposing state-of-the-art Vague Magnet Water Feature like Flycatcher Jen, Rancho de Bastardos continues to produce surprises and helps soothe some of the daily angst that comes with the territory this year. September is now upon us, the window is open and anything can happen, so good luck to everybody this month, Geri or otherwise.

On Summer Sorrows (Doldrummer)

One day last summer, one of Rancho de Bastardo's Mourning Doves would repeatedly raise one wing above its head - it looked like some sort of display. It was bizarre. Did it think it was a Rock Sandpiper, or was this a cry for help? Even Mourning Doves need to be rescued from triple digit temperatures and drearily slow birding.

With Thanksgiving just behind us, I think now is a good time for a little reflection. A facet of life that I always want to improve on is appreciating experiences; not taking the positive aspects of my life for granted. So much of what we experience on a daily basis falls on the mediocre or crappy side of things (life is pain) that I try my best to not let those better moments go by without looking them in the eye, even if just in passing.

So what am I thankful for this year? Well, Annabelle is doing great, so that is awesome. I work from home, which is fantastic. There is a really good bottle of mezcal in the kitchen. I still get to see friends, despite being banished to the bowels of San Jose. But inevitably, the subject of birding must be broached. Of course, now that I am a father (which is still weird to say) I don't have nearly as much time to blog as I used to...BUT I still get to bird hella, and that is something I can really appreciate. The freedom to go flog the shrubbery and indulge my most basic nerd instincts is near and dear to me.

Oak Titmouse is a pleasant, dependable bird, always hanging tough through the summers.

Another thing I'm grateful for is the good birding around here. For months now, I get to see something rare/interesting pretty much every weekend. I don't take this for granted at all, I'm pretty lucky. What has made me, the #7 birder in the United States, so modest and humble? What has given me the ability to relish fall birding in the bay area?

It wasn't some epiphany, a major breakthrough, a conquering of the urge to loathe the familiar. The answer is simple...summer. I have been forced to spend a number of summers in the bay area now, and the birding can be so dull that as I write this sentence my mind is trying to think of something more interesting to focus its energies on. Will Giancarlo Stanton be traded to the Giants? Is Repeater still my favorite Fugazi album? If I really needed to obtain heroin for some reason, how long would it take me? Tacos sound good right now...mmmm, tacos.

Like the dove and the titmouse, some cheerful Bewick's Wrens holds it down at Rancho de Bastardos over summer. However, I am beginning to detect some sort of a pattern here...

As I don't live in northern latitudes and am without mountains of appreciable elevation nearby, the summer birding doldrums are not to be scoffed at. I'm not just talking about the dearth of warbler species that breed in Santa Clara County, or even the massive urban sprawl that eats up habitat like a disease. There are other factors at work. Unlike here, Californians living near the immediate coast experience the following conditions during the warmest months of the year: Graypril, May Gray, June Gloom, Gray Sky July, and Fogust. I long for that kind of summer. Where I live, we have no such luck. Overcast days are rare and precious, and there was not a lot of that going on in June or July. San Jose is sunny and hot as fuck, which is maddening considering there is an ocean nearby. Silicon Valley is not where you want to find yourself those months unless you are bringing home a staggering paycheck from a tech firm...or southbound shorebirds have returned. Climate change is a bitch, but so is geography. San Jose is on the hot side of the coastal range, and when migration is seemingly at a standstill, the summer doldrums are real.

Northern Rough-winged Swallow, another common bird of summer here at Rancho and across the state. Wait a second...why is every bird I've posted so far gray and brown? Is that seriously what all of our summer birds look like? That is awful. I can't tell you the relief I felt when we got a couple weeks into July and the shorebird floodgates opened up.

Well, maybe not all our summer birds are dirt-colored. Caspian Terns and their horrific, violent calls helped get me through to the other side. I've said it before, but it bears repeating...this is a nice yard bird.

A lot of our resident Anna's Hummingbirds were doing some pretty intensive molting in July. I'm glad we have them of course, but it will be a triumphant day when a second hummingbird species is added to the yard list.

I was a bit surprised to see this fledgling Tree Swallow (oh great, a new brown bird to recruit into the current brown bird population) at the Los Capitancillos Ponds, considering they are far outnumbered here by the other expected swallow species. I'm not sure if it was hatched here or wandered from another part of the south bay.

Thankfully, Calocortus rages against the dying of spring long after many other wildflowers have withered under the relentless sun. Canada del Oro Open Space Preserve, Santa Clara County, CA.

Now this is a brown bird of summer I can really back - Common Poorwill! I went some years without seeing any...though it is a pleasant heard-only, I'm glad that drought is over. Thankfully, there is a dependable area for them just a few minutes from Rancho. Brown it up! Photographed along the Calero Creek Trail in San Jose, CA.

Every year, early in July, the bird gods open the spigot of the shorebird tap. Least Sandpipers are one of the first species to return, and though they are still brown brown brown as can be, these first returning birds are a sight for sore eyes. Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge, CA.

Seeing your first mixed shorebird flocks in July is the light at the end of the summer tunnel of darkness. A lot of the avocets are probably locals, but the dowitchers came from afar.

Hint: If you want people to think you are god's gift to bird photography, don't ever post photos this bad (this was digiscoped). It's embarrassing...but I am not embarrassed to say that this is the weirdest avocet I've ever seen. It was essentially all white except for its primaries, giving it a Snow Goose look. Rad.

Yip-yip-yip-yip...father stilt made it very clear to me that he does not want me near his chicks, although he is always right next to the boardwalk so I don't know what he expects.

Stilt offspring! I usually see them when they are younger and fluffier, this inbetween stage (apparently characterized by fat cankles) does not last very long. I like the brown covert edgings.

Anise Swallowtail, I reckon. You know, for all the great success Rancho de Bastardos has had with birds, it has been completely miserable for butterflies. I'm not exactly happy about that. I guess I am doomed to start attracting them to my yard, as geri birders like myself tend to do.

Great! I think this post pretty much recounts falling into, and climbing out of, 2017's summer doldrums...covering those are always a tough blogging assignment every year, because it's basically a bunch of whining and some pictures of common birds. Better to limit that, eh? 

Swift and Swallow Swarm, Yellow-throated Vireo, Summer Birds

Are you ready for another barrage of photos? Here goes...

One of the birding perks of being located where I am is the number of Vaux's Swifts present from April-September. This one is about to gobble its target, which you can see floating around innocently in the top left corner.

One day last spring I set out to get some Vaux's Swift photos that weren't completely horrendous for a change, which I did have some success with. I didn't have to go far...the swifts are a daily fixture at the Los Capitancillos Ponds, which are the ponds behind my backyard.

Few birds are more frustrating to photograph than swifts, but it was fun to see so many foraging down low. It turned out there was a big insect hatch in the ponds that day, and a swarm of swifts and swallows were feeding near eye level next to the trail.

My camera decided to focus on the rear bird in this photo...

...but a second later, locked on to the front bird when it suddenly banked.

Here is an eBird abundance map for Vaux's Swift in the region - I live in the single, darker purple cell that denotes more frequent observations than the rest of the area. For whatever reason, the ponds (and my yard!) is one of the most reliable places to see them in central California. It's no McNear Brickyard, but it suits me.

White-throated Swifts are much less common in the immediate area, but are generally much easier to find in the bay area; they will often nest under highway overpasses, and there is no shortage of those here.

Juvenile Anna's Hummingbirds can make for a challenging ID, as they typically lack any markings on the throat. This can render them into Costa's or Black-chinned imposters.

The faint rows of tiny spots this bird is displaying looks a lot different from the big dark blotch on the throat an adult female will show.

Black Phoebe production in the area is satisfactory.

Amazingly, while standing in the swift blizzard I managed a couple flight shots of a male Violet-green Swallow, often overlooked as one of the most crippling species in the west. Odd that Northern Rough-winged Swallows and Violet-green Facemelters occupy much of the same range and habitats, and aside from nest sites, they generally behave very similarly. Yet the males of one species are stunning, but poo-colored in the other.

That color on the rump is hard to fathom, and the only other ABA Area species that I can think of that has something close is Varied Bunting.

Tree Swallows, on the other hand, are significantly more fathomable. I saw them at the ponds very infrequently this year, and I spent an inordinate amount of time standing in the backyard checking swallow flocks for Bank Swallow/Purple Martin/Black Swift. Better luck next year with those, hopefully.

Late May and early June is when the window is open in California for spring vagues. These spring rarities are a different beast than the fall birds though...they can often be found by song (great!) and look their best (sick), but except at a handful of desert sites there are far fewer of them and they are much less chaseable. Always in a hurry to get someplace, they are. Other than the Black-and-white from the last post, I only managed to see this one other eastern bird last spring, but it was a great one.

Yellow-throated Vireo is a wonderful bird to see in California. Though not a Bird Police species, they are rare enough that most birders here will start grinding their teeth upon hearing about them. This is only the second individual I've ever seen in the state, and it was a hell of a lot more cooperative than the first.

This bird roamed around a few blocks at Moss Beach, adjacent to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. Amazingly, it stayed over a week before taking off to points unknown.

White-crowned Sparrow is one of the most abundant birds around here now, but most of these birds are migratory and leave in March and April. This is one of the year-round residents. Photographed at Half Moon Bay.

Hey! It's a Spotted Towhee! Also in Half Moon Bay.

In June we went south for Peak's wedding, which was fantastic as expected, but not good blog-fodder for nerds. I was able to get one morning of birding in with Dipper Dan. No rarity glory - finding a spring vague runt in Ventura County is like winning the lottery - but I got my 2017 Blue Grosbeaks at Canada Larga Road, where this Hooded Oriole teed up briefly. See you in March, Hooded Oriole.

A Black-headed Grosbeak did the same. We will reunite in April, Black-headed Grosbeak.

It's all about the juniper...and I do mean an actual juniper tree, not Juniper Titmouse. This is an Oak Titmouse in the backyard juniper tree. The juniper tree is crucial to what goes on here at Rancho del Bastardos - birds love it. One of these days I'm going to do another thorough yard post, and you too can share in the glory of my juniper tree. I'm also going to have to change the name of Rancho del Bastardos, as it's been pointed out to me by a couple people that my Spanish is bad and the name of my Rancho is gramatically incorrect...and you fucking bird people cannot sleep at night if you've encountered bad grammar during the day, so I will concede that something must be done.

Look at the soft complexion of this gentle titmouse. This Oak Titmouse in a juniper. Backyard birding during the summer was just slightly more surprising than watching paint dry, but we did get titmice in the yard a lot for a couple months - these days I typically only hear them calling from across the ponds.

Alright, that's enough, this was a pretty extensive post. Go birding, drinking whisky, etc.