Royal Fluff: Kinglets of the Upper Deschutes 

by Sevilla Rhoads

Regulus satrapa and Corthylio calendula

When you see royal terms like ‘king’ and ‘crowned’ in a bird’s name, you might imagine some majestic creature akin to a heron or bird of prey. However, the Golden-crowned (Regulus satrapa) and Ruby-crowned Kinglets (Corthylio calendula) are miniature, supremely adorable songbirds. These mini-cotton ball birds almost define cuteness and perhaps also hope….every winter day, kinglets tragically live on the edge of death.  Just enough of them survive to replenish the population during the summer.  

Over ninety percent of kinglets die during the colder months.  One night of adverse weather can wipe out entire flocks.  Kinglets who survive as long as our April thaw here in Sunriver and La Pine, are the few which have defied the odds to feel the warmth of the spring sunshine.  It is still largely a mystery how they survive at all.  Scientist and naturalist author, Bernd Heinrich is “awestruck by” and “marvels at” Golden-crowned Kinglets in his book Winter World. He concludes the book by saying they “prove the fabulous is possible.”

Kinglets are one of the rewards for Upper Deschutes’ winter birding. Rarely seen around Sunriver and La Pine in the summer, during the winter flocks regularly flit and forage around this area.  In early April, those that survived winter will head north to nest.  Some remain in the Upper Deschutes, but at higher elevations in places with more fir trees, such as around Brown’s Mountain.  It is not clear if any breed here.

While barely known by the general public, kinglets deeply move those who come to know them. One of America’s foremost ornithologists, Arthur Bent, began his love of birds when he found a dead kinglet (a “tiny feathered gem”) whose delicate delightful details sparked a life of avian interest.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kinglets typically weigh only five to six grams (less than half an ounce or about the weight of a nickel). They are among the world’s smallest songbirds. The Golden-crowned (the smaller of the two Kinglets) is barely bigger than a hummingbird. And, much of their size is truly just fluff. 

Living in cold climates, they have more insulation than flight feathers. To stay warm, they trap as much air as they can between feathers, which gives them their round seeding-dandelion look. While their down gives these birds their sweet stuffed animal look, it also slows them down in flight, making them more vulnerable to predators.  Perhaps their slower aerial turning speed is a reason kinglets are one of the birds most frequently killed by window strikes.

Being so small, Golden-crowned Kinglets are well adapted to hanging off the tips of pine needles to get the almost microscopic insects that larger birds cannot see or reach. The Golden-crowned often hovers, almost like a puffy hummingbird, when they glean. Before Heinrich questioned the assumption, it was thought Golden-crowned survived the winters by eating Springtails.  Springtails (sometimes called Snow Fleas, even though they do not bite) are those tiny bugs that appear like thousands of black dots on the snow. https://www.chaosofdelight.org/gallery. However, Heinrich did not see any kinglets eating Springtails where he lived in Maine, so he spent several years studying the kinglet’s winter diet and found they were eating hibernating moth caterpillars and spiders.  We are not sure what they eat here in the Upper Deschutes, but likely it is also insects like spiders and perhaps also hibernating lava and caterpillars.

Ruby-crowned are a bit bigger but also mostly eat insects. They are known for wing-flicking during foraging, which some believe is a way to scare bugs out of hiding. We don’t see why an insect would reveal itself when a bird flicks its wings, but we can’t think of a better theory!

When you encounter a kinglet, you quickly notice its almost constant movement. Sometimes described as frantic, kinglets live in fast-forward mode. Ruby-crowned pause and appear in the open more often than Golden-crowned, but both species are incredibly energetic such that they literally vanish in the blink of an eye. Most of my kinglet photos are of disappearing fuzzy bottoms and feet! Even when I press the shutter when I see a kinglet, the bird has often moved on by the time my camera reacts.

Why are kinglets so busy? It is a matter of pure survival against the odds. Kinglets have to continually refuel in order to stay alive. Due, in part, to their size, they have to maintain a body temperature of around 104 degrees Fahrenheit. One study, cited by Cornell’s Birds of the World, stated the observed Golden-crowned Kinglets did not stop foraging, even once, during the day in winter. Heinrich estimated they move every two to four seconds. Imagine having to gather and eat food without interruption all day for months to stay alive.

On a cold day, Kinglets can starve and freeze to death in just one to two hours if they do not find enough food. Almost ninety percent of kinglets die in their first winter. They have on of the shortest lifespans in the bird world. Disruption to their habitat, such as a loss of crucial food sources and changes to the climate, can take a heavy toll on this species, with entire flocks dying during a night. Interestingly, it is slightly warmer temperatures producing cold rain in stead of snowflakes which may be most dangerous to kinglets because wet feathers cannot insulate sufficiently for a long freezing night.

You have to wonder why kinglets didn’t evolve to migrate further south like so many other little birds. They probably play some key role in our winter ecosystem, which we do not yet understand. There is some controversy among experts about how kinglets survive winter nights, especially the Golden-crowned, which have made it through northern winters with temperatures hitting lows of minus forty. One study found that, even when a Golden-crowned finds enough food during the day, it is only enough fat for half a night of life-sustaining metabolism.  

In the book Winter World, Bernd Heinrich is “awestruck” Golden-crowned Kinglets survive more than five minutes on a cold winter day. Pointing out these birds need to maintain a temperature several degrees higher than most other creatures and often over a hundred degrees higher than the chilled air around it, Heinrich spent years figuring out how any kinglets make it to spring.

Unlike many other winter birds, Kinglets do not use torpor (which is a lite hibernation state used to get through cold snaps), so they must find enough food to get through the day and find shelter and warmth for the night. Before Heinrich’s dedicated observing, it was thought kinglets slept in insulated squirrel nests. However, squirrels eat birds like kinglets, and their nests are too well-sealed for a kinglet to break in. Heinrich concluded kinglets find shelter wherever they can, nearest the last good foraging (because they do not have time to stop eating to find or build shelters), then rely on huddling up together with feet and heads tucked in. He once found four kinglets sleeping in a ball with just tails sticking out.   https://vtecostudies.org/blog/kinglets-in-the-cold/. 

Heinrich also speculates that Golden-crowned Kinglets constantly call to each other because if you lose your friend during the day, you could all die that night. They need to huddle together in enough numbers to generate life-saving heat. Since reading this theory, I hear the kinglet’s constant tiny sounds so differently than before as I imagine them calling “I’m here!” to each other.  

Perhaps due to the high mortality rate, Golden-crowned Kinglets have two sets of kids a year and lay more eggs than most other songbirds (between 8 and 12 eggs per brood). They usually breed up in the northern boreal forests (some breed south of Canada) in such tiny nests that little is known about their family lives. Much of their summer is still a mystery to ornithologists, but it is thought that when the chicks fledge, the females tend to hand off the first set of kids to the male to look after while she focuses on laying another batch of eggs. Sometimes, Dad is expected to feed all ten or so chicks and Mum while she incubates the rest of the year’s youngsters. Golden-crowned Dads are superhero foragers for their families which can consist of over twenty-four kids at a time!

While kinglets have one of the highest adult death rates, they have one of the lowest chick mortality rates. The following information about a Golden-crowned nest is mostly from only a handful of observations. While the male sings supportive tunes (perhaps conserving his energy for his future father duties), the female builds an incredible nest to insulate and protect her eggs and newborns. Mainly using spider webs, she weaves a silken pouch under a branch. Hanging under a bough, the nest is protected from the last snowstorms of the year and is hard for predators to reach. The walls of her nest are over an inch and a half thick, lined with moss, fur, and grouse feathers. She places the grouse feathers quill downwards around the nest to create a beautiful circular fan around her family. The female lays so many eggs she has to layer them. When they hatch, the chicks are barely as large as a bumblebee.

A little more is known about the Ruby-crowned because, while most also nest in the northern forests, a number nest further south where they can be more easily studied. Ruby-crowned can also have up to twelve eggs but usually only have one brood a year. In our blog post about the Brown Creeper, we marveled at how the Creeper uses spider cocoons to make nests, feed young, and combat nest mites. Ruby-crowned Kinglets also use spider cocoons and webs to build nests, but have an additional reason: Spider silk is flexible, which means the nest stretches to accommodate the growing chicks! https://www.sacramentoaudubon.org/kids-corner/n17x10qb80neodl0lf6yxf5msslth2

While both the Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned are called Kinglets, they are genetically quite different. You would think you could easily tell these birds apart by their different crown colors, but in the winter, they tend to keep the crowns flat against their heads, making them hard to see on these rapidly moving tiny birds. At a quick glance, kinglets have similar bodies and can be confused, but look at their differing facial markings.

The Golden-crowned has black and white stripes, whereas the Ruby-crowned only has a white eye-ring. They also have very different calls. The Golden-crowned chirps are frequent and high-pitched, like the tinkling of a brook, but the Ruby-crowned is often silent until it utters a surprisingly loud rasp that reminds me of a wren’s call.

For more identification and additional call information, including recordings, see:  https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Golden-crowned_Kinglet/overview and https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ruby-crowned_Kinglet/sounds. Note the somewhat random but cool fact from Cornell’s All About Birds that Golden-crowned Kinglets have a single teensy-tiny feather covering each nostril.  

If you want to enjoy our local south Deschutes County kinglets before they depart, pause on your walks, listen for the tiny calls, and then look for movement. During winter, Golden-crowned are common along the Sunriver trails and surrounding forests, but you can easily miss these darting fluffs if you do not pay attention. Ruby-crowned are more likely seen at the start and then end of the winter season than during the colder, snowier mid-winters here.

When we wish our local kinglets farewell in the spring, be sure to wish them luck and perhaps a nod of gratitude for brightening our winter days because they are critical pest control for North America’s surviving forests. Kinglets are known to move into areas where insect infestations threaten the remaining trees. Their specialized pest control, reaching bugs that larger birds cannot and eating pest larvae, is a crucial component of our ecosystems’ natural defense. 

The 2023 American Birding Association’s Bird of the Year: the Belted Kingfisher. 

Megaceryle alcyon

A special thank you to Marina Richie for inspiration!

Every now and then you encounter a bird with whom, for whatever reason, you develop a personal relationship.  Sometimes it is a bird you rescue, perhaps it is an individually recognizable bird who visits your feeder, or maybe it is a bird which seems to be around during a special or hard time in your life.  This winter, our family developed a relationship with a Queenfisher, technically known as a female Belted Kingfisher.

The relationship began last November as winter moved in.  We were reading Marina Richie’s book Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher.  Entranced by Marina’s poetic writing and intrigued by her literary love affair with this deceptively secretive bird, we set out to better know our local kingfishers.  Marina helped us realize we had taken kingfishers for granted.  They may be loud and perch in full view, but they let few get close and hardly any find out their secrets.

As if she knew our purpose, the Queenfisher immediately scolded us when we reached the riverside.  Her call, often described as a harsh rattle, left us duly chastised for taking so long to fully appreciate such an amazing creature in our midst.  We also knew she was warning us to stay far enough away to let her fish in peace.

‘Our’ Queenfisher lives year round on the Deschutes south of Sunriver.  Many female kingfishers migrate, but this one does not.

She spends the year on a stretch of the Deschutes near a concrete bridge where we have visited her almost daily for several months; we think she believes the bridge is hers.  When she really wants her opinion considered, she has perfected the use of the bridge to echo her voice such that it reverberates for quite a distance.  We can’t help but wonder if this is not an adaptation to traffic and other human noise.

Belted Kingfishers are common in the Upper Deschutes and across the continental United States.  In fact, Cornell’s Birds of the World says they are “one of the most widespread land birds in North America.”  Yet, according to the same source, they are “poorly studied.”  Fortunately, Marina’s  book is an incredible and deep source of information about this fascinating, yet little known, species.  Not only does Marina cover the available technical details, but she adds to what is known with her own observing, wondering, and discovering.

The North American Belted Kingfisher is part of large worldwide bird family, Alcedinidae, of about 120 species.  They are so widespread that one fun podcast host pointed out that if you develop a kingfisher phobia and decide you must live where you could not encounter one, you would have to move to one of the poles or the Sahara desert!  https://www.scienceofbirds.com/podcast/kingfishers.  

In North America, there are approximately 1.7 million breeding Belted Kingfishers.  This may sound like a lot, but sadly their population has decreased by at least a million birds from their estimated population in 1970.  

Like so many other creatures and plants, Belted Kingfishers need clean clear water to feed.

Such waterways are vanishing, even here in the Upper Deschutes.  Due to drought conditions, the Deschutes River cannot meet the water needs of people downstream. From around October to April, the river is now only a couple of feet deep in many places around us.

As a result, one night of freezing temperatures can ice over the kingfishers’ feeding areas.  During warmer seasons, turbidity is a serious issue.  When Wickiup was low these past two years, the Upper Deschutes became thick with muddy silt and algae began growing over the oxbows.  Dead fish washed up on the river banks around Sunriver and the kingfishers could not see their prey.  No one has studied how many kingfishers we lose during these times.

Every day this winter when we woke to a frozen river, we anxiously hiked out to see if Queenfisher (nicknamed Queenie by my youngest) was okay.  We’d look for her on her favorite morning perch, but she was not there.  We have no idea where she goes when there are no fishing holes.  We hiked up and down the river looking for her.  

We only found a couple of holes in the ice and those were full with geese, ducks, otters, and even a Pied-billed Grebe.    

And, none of the openings were near perches for Queenie because they tend to be out in the middle of the river where the water flows a bit faster.  Fortunately, the river usually thaws in a day or two and Queenie has somehow survived each freeze so far.  As soon as the river breaks up, she reappears and starts pulling fish. 

Belted Kingfishers are piscivorous, which is a cool term for primarily fish-eating.  Apparently they will sometimes grab some other small creatures, but we have only seen them eat fish.  Watching Queenie feed is amazing.  She dives into the water like a bullet.  She usually dives from her perch, but occasionally she will hover over the river briefly before the final plunge.  Somehow she pulls back up and out of the water without fully submerging.  We can’t see what happens under the water, but we learned that she likely grabs the fish rather than stabs it.  Certainly, when she emerges the fish is in her bill, not impaled.

 

 

Whatever she does down there, it is effective because she almost always succeeds and her catches are often more than twice the length of her head! She then goes back to her perch and smashes the fish against the branch a couple of times before she aligns it head down her throat and swallows it whole.

 We also learned kingfishers regurgitate pellets to manage the undigestible fish bones.

Speaking of bullets, a Japanese engineer was inspired by kingfishers when he designed one of the high speed ‘bullet’ trains.  This story of biomimicry to solve an engineering problem is really interesting.  My kids enjoyed this version:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p074bhmx.  We have never looked at a kingfisher bill in the same way since we listened to this program. 

And speaking of otters, researchers think the U.K.  Common Kingfisher sometimes teams up with river otters as a way to improve fishing success.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0bhy3c4. Our family’s unscientific kingfisher observations lead us to believe our Central Oregon kingfishers might have also figured out the otter thing.  We often notice kingfishers around otters and we recently watched a kingfisher follow a pair of otters up a tributary as they all fished.  Could be coincidence, but it is fun to wonder.  

Not just because of her impressive bill, Queenie is handsome. We love watching her lift and lower her chic crest while fanning her starry-night wings and tail.  Like all female Belted Kingfishers, Queenie’s charcoal necklace arcs down to a rust-rouge waistcoat.  For those who remember Marlene Dietrich in her dark suits with white shirts and red scarves, we have to ponder if the Belted Kingfisher inspired her defiant style!  Male Belted Kingfishers grow out of their rust band, maturing into a pure grey and white look.  Marina’s book wonderfully delves into why kingfishers’ plumage coloring defies gender stereotypes.

Around the end of February, we noticed a male Belted Kingfisher appear downstream.  So far, he stays four river bends away, but we suspect he can hear Queenie from there.  According to Birds of World, Belted Kingfishers are seasonally monogamous.  We checked our last two years of bird lists and noted Queenie has been alone on her stretch of the river all winter for the last several years until a male turns up in late February.  Could the downstream guy be the same one from last year? Thanks to Marina’s compelling accounts of watching Belted Kingfisher courtship, we are inspired to pay more attention this year.  

Our bird records show that after Queenie was joined by a male, they hung out together for a while and then we only saw one at a time for a period in the spring.  We have to assume this was during egg incubation.  But where did Queenie and her seasonal husband nest?   Belted Kingfishers nest in earthen burrows which are usually above the waterway.  They dig the burrows themselves using their bills and toes.  Some burrows can be up to fifteen feet long!  One of our favorite parts in Marina’s book is where she discovers ‘her’ kingfishers diving into a bank using their bills as battering ram excavators.  

This Belted Kingfisher behavior had never been documented in scientific literature before, so Richie’s discovery ended up being cited in an ornithological research paper.  We appreciated how a naturalist’s love of a bird inadvertently ended up contributing to science.  https://marinarichie.com/2022/06/23/kingfishers-why-we-need-a-naturalist-renaissance/. 

The more we learn about Queenie, the more connected we feel to her.  The kids get excited to go out and say hello to her and worry when she is not on her usual perch.  This stretch of river would not feel right without her commanding call declaring she belongs here as much as the towering ponderosas. Queenie’s ancestors appear in the stories and traditions of the tribes who fished alongside these birds back when the river flowed evenly and clear.  Before it was dammed, the Deschutes River was known as one of the most stable rivers in the world with unusually consistent spring-fed water levels.  https://www.deschutesriver.org/how-to-help/raise-the-deschutes/where-does-our-water-come-from/.  Marina Richie’s book illustrates how kingfishers touched the imaginations of so many different tribes in her overview of Native American Kingfisher stories.  So, my kids are far from the first generation to sit on the banks of this river connecting to a kingfisher.  Let’s just hope they are not the last.

The Belted Kingfisher is the 2023 American Birding Association’s Bird of the Year. https://www.aba.org/belted-kingfisher-the-2023-aba-bird-of-the-year/.  For identification and scientific details see https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Belted_Kingfisher.

SAVE THE DATE – May 24, 2023

On May 24th, the Sunriver Nature Center celebrates one of our coolest and most handsome waterway birds and the American Birding Association’s Bird of the Year: the Belted Kingfisher!  

A bird that inspired a Japanese bullet train design, is related to the Australian Kookaburra, and smashes its head into cliffs to build nests!….Yes, and there is so much more to learn and enjoy about kingfishers…

So join us for a kingfisher themed afternoon of outdoor and indoor kids’ activities followed by an all ages evening walk and talk led by Marina Richie, author of Halcyon Journey, In Search of the Belted Kingfisher.  

Marina Richie’s book will be on sale at the Nature Center gift store and our local Sunriver Books and Music  https://www.sunriverbooks.com/.  

At four in the morning on December 20th, the Sunriver forest was so quiet, you could hear the light snow patting the frozen trees.  It was just above freezing.  Suddenly, startlingly close, a deep hoot pushed through the silence.  This was the bugle sounding the start of the Sunriver 2022 Bird Count.  Species number one:  Great Horned Owl.

By sunrise, volunteer birders had three Great Horned Owls on our list.  As these owls closed their eyes to roost for the day, around fifty Bird Count volunteers were setting out, bundled up (many with coffee in hand), to start their routes. Their mission: As part of the 123rd Audubon ‘Christmas’ Bird Count, to spot and identify on one day, as many birds as possible in a fifteen mile diameter circle around the Sunriver area.

Sunriver’s Circle includes the frozen waterfalls of Fall River, the gurgling of never frozen springs at Spring River, the icy slopes of Lava Butte, golf courses turned winter tundras such as Crosswater and Quail Run, rarely visited snow-encased buttes west and south of Edison Ice Cave Road including Kuamaski and Wake, the feeders and neighborhoods of Sunriver and Three Rivers, and the Deschutes river trails across from the lava flows at Dillon Falls all the way down to where the river flows into La Pine State Park. 

The majority of volunteers were beginners, willing to help scour trees and skylines to find birds for their experienced team leaders to identify and record. Volunteer ages ranged from nine to around ninety.  Some teams took all-wheel drive high clearance vehicles down forest service roads, some hiked with traction boots and poles along the icy river trails and there was a stationary count at the Sunriver Nature Center, where people could equally contribute in a more accessible location, by watching the critical lake and meadow habitats.  

In addition to finding over 3,923 individual birds in one day, volunteers also made new friends, learned from each other, had a lot of fun, experienced beauty and the joy of nature, and meaningfully contributed to citizen science. 

Despite many frozen waterways, deep snow cover, and recent below zero temperatures, these volunteers were able to confirm 58 bird species.

Some highlights of the day:

• A family in the community welcomed a team of birders into their yard where they caught a good look at a very unusual Pinyon Jay.  
• A couple in their off-road truck discovered an American Dipper foraging on Fall River.
• Nature Center bird walk leaders recorded four wild Trumpeter Swans by Cardinal Bridge.
• The La Pine State Park team was thrilled to spot the elusive Northern Goshawk.  
• The Nature Center team, after being delighted by a flock of Pygmy Nuthatches emerging from a tree cavity, spied a Rough-legged Hawk which is an arctic breeding species.  A visiting teenager at the Nature Center, there to practice his nature photography hobby, was able to help identify the Hawk by showing the birders a close-up on his camera of the bird’s markings.  
• A kid found a Great Gray Owl and was able to take a great photo with his parent’s iPhone.
• A group of mostly beginners, as part of the twenty-one species on their list, enjoyed watching a Merlin hunting by the river as well as seeing two Bald Eagles on their route.
• One river trail team found themselves looking for ducks alongside a group of hunters.  The hunters and birders talked of their shared interest in conserving natural beauty and future bird populations and the hunters asked for more information about how they could join a Nature Center team next year to help with the effort.
• Thanks in large part to the residential area team (who had to dig their hybrid out of a snow bank more than once during the count process), our final bird list included over seven hundred Pygmy Nuthatches and over seven hundred Mountain Chickadees! Many volunteer smiles were inspired by seeing so many cute little fluffs in just one day!

On Count Day evening, teams were able to share these and many more stories as they warmed up at the Nature Center with volunteer donated hot cocoa and cookies.  The count ended around 9pm with one last determined volunteer sloshing around looking for owls in the snow-turned-rain.  

The final count numbers as seen below will be available on Audubon’s CBC site after the official tally is approved.

We are already planning the 2023 Count!  It will again be on December 20th with the same Circle area.

Audubon’s Participation Mission Statement:

“Protecting and conserving nature and the environment transcends political, cultural, and social boundaries. Respect, inclusion, and opportunity for people of all backgrounds, lifestyles, perspectives, and abilities will attract the best ideas and harness the greatest passion to shape a healthier, more vibrant future for all of us who share our planet. We welcome everyone who finds delight in birds and nature. Participation in the Audubon Christmas Bird Count brings us together as a caring community of people who are inspired by birds and want to protect them.”

 

2022 Totals

Photos: Sevilla Rhoads

By Sevilla Rhoads
Special thank you to Chuck Gates for reviewing this post.

Owls of the Upper Deschutes

Part One: The Great Horned Owl (bubo virginianus)

Noah Strycker’s Birding Without Borders starts: “On New Year’s Day, superstitious birdwatchers like to say, the very first bird you see is an omen for the future.” Predawn on January 1, 2023, the snowy Upper Deschutes’ forests and meadows were mostly quiet to the human ear. Most of us, except perhaps some intrepid hunters, were snuggled in bed.  

Suddenly, around 4 a.m., a primal alarm clock roused us with a deep hooting. A Great Horned Owl pushed the winter’s silence out of the shadowy conifers into the barely-moonlit river valley. Like its deep blanket of down, the owl’s call is thick and full. The first hoot was soon answered by another in the distance. Then the owls performed a duet with voices perfectly evolved to carry through snow-coated landscapes of ice-draped trees.

For those of us urged by Great Horned Owls to start 2023 early, we wonder what this species portends?

The Klamath-Modoc people (who lived mostly to the south, but spent time in the Upper Deschutes) have references to an Owl Spirit called ‘Mukus’ or ‘mu’lwas’. It is thought Mukus helped Klamath healers diagnose illness. One translation of a Klamath doctor’s incantation is: “I possess the horned owl’s sharp vision…”. An ancient rock illustration in the Klamath area depicts a Great Horned Owl’s face high on the rock wall. At least one scholar thinks this image refers to the owl helping a Shaman see illness from a high perch.  

However, for some Klamath, healing is not the only association with Great Horned Owls. In one ancient creation story, an “evil” force created the Great Horned Owl. A dark power, jealous of the original creator, gave the Great Horned Owl fierce and deadly traits such as silent flight.

Some Klamath tribal members (often young men, older women, and those called to Shamanism) likely engaged in vision quests. Alone on their quests, in places like the Upper Deschutes, they fasted and plunged into cold waters while waiting for guidance in visions. Some believed the first vision would be the Great Horned Owl who would tempt with these words: “My eyes look like the Sun and I can see anything, here, far away, or even in the future. This is why nothing can hide from me. And I am strong; I can kill anything with my claws. I am a good hunter and warrior; I am silent and can sneak up on anything and kill it without it noticing me. This is what I do, so if you really want power, then take me.” From The Landscape of Klamath Basin Rock Art. [http://npshistory.com/publications/labe/klamath-basin-rock-art.pdf]  

There are “horned” owls in many other areas, including Eurasia. One example is the large Eurasian Eagle Owl. Interestingly, some Christian traditions depict Jesus being tempted by a horned being during his “vision quest” in the wilderness. Also, several ancient European myths, including some original Christmas stories, have descriptions of dark-horned beings punishing naughty children on winter nights. If you are now curious what an Eurasian Eagle Owl looks like, there is one at the Sunriver Nature Center.  

“Hoo” knows whether large nocturnal owls played any role in the development of these stories. But, as the Great Horned Owl keeps you awake during our own long mid-winter nights, it is fun to wonder if and why tufted owls touched the diverse imaginations of ancestors in similar ways. What we do know is that there is a high chance the early January Great Horned Owl calls have woken the people of the Upper Deschutes for thousands of years.

Having just read about the Klamath’s idea of Mukus as a healing spirit, I was struck by a story in Jim Anderson’s autobiography, Tales from a Northwest Naturalist.  In his book, Jim Anderson, a founder of the Sunriver Nature Center’s nature programs, wrote a moving account of a nature talk he gave to a special education class.  During his class presentation with a live Great Horned Owl, Jim noticed a girl pacing silently staring at the owl.  After the presentation, as Jim went to leave, the young girl blocked his way out.  Suddenly, she said “I know about owls!” and then talked excitedly at length with a smile that “lit up the room.”  Afterwards, Jim was stopped at his car by a teacher, with tears in her eyes, who said “that’s the first time that child has spoken since she has been in this school.”  Jim reflected “That owl had found a key – a path for a young girl to take…”  p.137.  Jim Anderson, who passed in 2022, said his favorite animal was the Great Horned Owl.  So, it is not surprising that his book is full of wonderful Great Horned Owl stories and information and is a great read for anyone sharing his passion for this bird.

Back to January 2023, I noticed that, as the moon grew fuller, the Great Horned Owls’ calls became more insistent. By the full moon, the owls barely waited until dark to start calling.  By the February 5th full moon, their hoots were shooing the late afternoon light to retreat more quickly behind the Cascades so they could perform their courting and territorial grand finales.  Early February sunsets in the Upper Deschutes are stage lighting for Great Horned Owl operas.  

Like other owl species, Great Horned Owls breed in the winter. Around Sunriver, these owls start calling to each other in mid to late December and likely nest in mid to late February. They cannot build nests, so they find ones built by raptors, ravens, and even squirrels and eagles. These nests can be in trees, platforms, cliffs, or any suitable surface. Sometimes the original nest owner will still be around, especially the Red-tailed Hawks and Common Ravens. So pay attention if you see these species acting agitated around late January and February. In Sunriver, where several pairs of Great Horned Owls regularly nest, we have encountered some stand-offs between hawks, ravens, and owls. The powerful and confident Great Horned usually wins.

After laying around 1-4 eggs, the female incubates for roughly a month while the male brings her food. Imagine sitting on a pile of sticks through the weather we usually experience in February and March, such as those bitterly cold nights and driving snow storms! One late February, all we could see of a devoted owl mother were her tufts blown backward into her nest wall by a hard icy wind.  Incubating females can keep their eggs warm even when temperatures are seventy degrees under the needed 37°.

While not often observed, there are documented owl families where two females incubated eggs and raised young together while a male fed them both.  For example, see [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/animals-owls-birds-parenting-polygamy] Also, female Great Horned Owls are larger than males.  Jim Anderson’s book has some great photographs illustrating this gender size difference.  Sometimes, birds help us question assumptions. 

Just as flycatchers begin returning to South Deschutes County’s meadows in late April, we start to notice Great Horned Owl fledglings, sporting motley teenage molts, clumsily flying around. Usually, vigilant parents are close by. Around Sunriver, we have watched Great Horned Owl adults aggressively protect their loud floundering young as an unkindness of Common Ravens tries to carry off a fledgling.

Great Horned Owls are powerful. Depending on which study you read, a mature female’s talons can exert between 500 to 750 PSI of pressure.  This degree of talon strength allows Great Horned Owls to prey on a wide variety of animals and even other birds of prey, some of which are bigger than the owl itself. [https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/jrr/v036n01/p00058-p00065.pdf] Highly adaptable, the Great Horned will eat a surprising range of creatures, including reptiles, other owls, and skunks. In an excellent December 2022 Bend Source article by Damian Fagan, he provides information from Think Wild about how most of their Great Horned Owl patients arrive smelling strongly of skunk! [https://www.bendsource.com/outside/species-spotlight-great-horned-owl-18266497] Adapted to urban life, Great Horned Owls also eat pets. Near one Pacific Northwest town, an abandoned Great Horned Owl nest was found to contain some cat collars whose bells had inadvertently advertised dinner for the Great Horned.  

If you have ever watched a Great Horned Owl eat its catch, you may have noticed that if the prey fits, it goes down whole – head, body, fur, feet, and lastly, the tail, disappear without a single chew! Owls cannot chew and do not have teeth. They can tear prey into smaller pieces, but the preferred dining experience is a whole meal deal.  As you can imagine, all those bones are hard to digest. The owl’s gizzard separates the digestible soft tissues and packages the teeth, bones, and feathers into a regurgitated pellet. Owl pellets are infamous aspects of many a kid nature camp or science class because you can often find the entire skeletons to recreate the owl’s last victims.

Native to the U.S., Great Horned Owls are widespread. They are one of our remaining native predators, in part because they have adapted well to human development. The owls’ success is a mixed blessing. It is wonderful we can listen to the call of an owl depicted in the local ancient myths, but Great Horned Owls are aggressive predators who know how to take advantage of less adaptive species. Pushed into smaller wild spaces by development, fires, droughts, and other factors, some animals have fewer places to hide from the Great Horned and more easily become prey. For example, the Great Horned Owl is one of the primary predators of the uncommon Great Gray Owls.

On the positive side, recent scientific studies emphasize the significant benefits of having apex (top) predators in habitats. [Https://tesf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Ripple-etal_2022.pdf] Top predators help keep prey populations, like rodents, to naturally healthy numbers, which helps the plants and other animals impacted by the overpopulation of any species. A more balanced natural environment leads to fewer fires, droughts, and diseases, not to mention the increased natural beauty of our precious and unique Upper Deschutes area.

Speaking of apex predators, there is ample documentation of communication between wolves and ravens, but another possible inter-species conversation is between Great Horned Owls and wolves. We know little about how Oregon’s native wolves interacted with other native predators in the Upper Deschutes because wolves were exterminated from this area by 1947, but a recent study of Yellowstone area recordings indicated an intentional communication between Great Horned Owls and howling wolves. 

[https://www.npca.org/articles/3168-are-you-talking-to-me] It is possible wolves will repopulate the Upper Deschutes, so perhaps one day we will be fortunate enough to hear a nocturnal duet between owls and wolves.   

Great Horned Owls do not migrate, so we enjoy them year round here in south Deschutes County.  Being one of the most adaptable species, their population is not currently threatened.  These owls are a welcome source of free pest control in this area.  One of their favorite snacks are rodents and they greatly help reduce rodent populations around our homes and businesses.   However, many owls die from ingesting rodent bait because the poisoned rats and mice are easy prey, especially in the winter and when the owls are trying to feed hungry kids back in the nest.  So, if you see or hear owls in your neighborhood, consider non-poison pest control methods, especially during the winter and spring.  

For a great source of further identification tips, call sounds and species information, see: 

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Horned_Owl/overview

 

By Sevilla Rhoads
Special thank you to Marilyn and Craig Miller for inspiration, information, and editing.

Glistening frosts crystallize the Upper Deschutes’ river meadows in October and November. A few sparrows and kinglets (both Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned) rustle the Willows’ browning leaves. Warbler migration trickles to an end. Eventually, only a handful of hardy Yellow-rumped Warblers are left to fight over the dwindling supply of insects.

When you enjoy watching birds, there is never a ‘bad’ time to bird because the end of one species’ season is just the beginning of another’s. The first snow clouds scudding over Bachelor may wave goodbye to warblers, but that same wave is greeting thousands of migrating geese.

In the Pacific Northwest, there are several rare Greater White-fronted sub-species including the “Tule” (A. a. eglasi) and “Pacific” (A. a. Sponsa.)  The “Tundra” (A. a. gambelli) winters from the Rockies eastward, and rarely if ever wanders to the west.   

There are only an estimated seven thousand Tule left. However, the Tule sometimes migrate through this area to rest at Summer Lake before continuing south to winter in California. They are hard to identify but look for a goose resembling a larger and darker brown White-fronted.  

Around mid-October, when the surrounding peaks don their white winter outfits, we get excited to spot the season’s first Snow geese (Anser caerulescens). https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Snow_Goose/   This year we found our first 2022 Sunriver winter Snow Goose on October 21st. It landed on the Deschutes, near the Nature Center, with a large group of Canada geese. It was a juvenile, likely a year or two old. For several days, this youngster delighted us by staying in the area to rest, preen, and forage along the river banks and islands.

Later in October, a pair of Snow geese, an adult and a juvenile, turned up on the driving range by the Resort. Dodging golf balls, they grazed alongside a Greater White-fronted Goose for several days. This pair was likely a parent and child. Geese tend to have strong family bonds, with some families staying together for life, which can be over twenty years.

Back in February 2022, for several weeks, we watched another likely parent and child pair of Snow geese as they grazed around the Nature Center wetlands and meadows by the airport. Sadly, we later found the youngster’s remains, likely eaten by a coyote in the night. The adult was swimming in circles on the river nearby as if undecided whether it could leave the body of its child. Finally, it took off and flew north later that day.

Geese are protective of their families with strong and long-term partner and child bonds. The adult Snow Goose likely fought and chased the coyotes that night, but in late winter, the predators are often lean and hungry so would not have easily given up a plump goose meal.

Speaking of hungry predators, scientists speculate Snow geese may be a critical new food source for Polar Bears. Researchers noticed Polar Bears are learning to hunt geese and eat their eggs when forced onto land due to the loss of their ice habitats. However, not evolved for goose hunting, the bears expend a lot of energy in the wild goose chase and may not get sufficient calories for this output.

The Snow Goose population has sharply increased since the 1970’s. Primarily due to increased agriculture creating abundant winter food combined with laws that prevented indigenous peoples from traditional goose hunting, wild geese numbers threatened the health of their tundra breeding areas. Traditionally, the Inuit and Cree people depended on “Light Geese” (Snow and Ross’s Goose) as a food supply. The Canadian government has now partnered with the Inuit to figure out how to manage the goose population issue.

Not all Snow Geese are light-colored. There are occasional ‘blue’ Snow Geese. Once thought a separate species, DNA testing found blue geese are a single gene color morph. Scan flocks of geese passing through the Upper Deschutes and you may be lucky enough to spot a blue morph.

Ross’s Goose (Anser rossii) is another species that migrates over the Upper Deschutes. While they rarely stop around Sunriver, you may be fortunate enough to find one here. They are smaller than the Snow Goose and lack its dark area on the lower bill. They usually have more of a blue grey on the base of the bill and the black wing tips look different. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Rosss_Goose/species-compare/59939451.

One reason even massively strong Polar Bears expend too much energy trying to steal goose eggs and chicks is the goose’s superior guarding skills and protective loyalty to home and family. Throughout history, people have partnered with geese to protect and detect. Geese and dogs are the oldest domesticated animals. Some, including the ancient Roman Pliny the Elder, consider geese better security animals than dogs. Pliny claimed a goose battalion saved Rome from a surprise attack in 390 BC, where the dogs failed to detect the approaching invaders. The U.S. Army has used geese to guard military installations. Currently, the Chinese government utilizes geese to assist in policing its COVID lock-downs and borders.  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/why-china-is-using-guard-geese-to-uphold-its-zero-covid-policy

Maturing whiskey is highly valuable in Scotland. In 1959, an ingenious engineer with a birding background persuaded a Scotch producer to try geese as security for its new fourteen-acre maturing warehouses. https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/whisky-heroes/26782/scotch-watch-the-ballantine-s-geese/. Not a single dram was stolen during the goose patrol years which lasted until 2012 when cameras took over. It is questionable whether the cameras were an improvement because the geese not only kept thieves away, but also neatly trimmed the grass and produced eggs which were sold for food. The egg profits were donated to a nearby veteran’s hospital.   

 

Why do geese provide such good security? Not only fiercely devoted to their family and home area, geese also have excellent eyesight and hearing. They can separately control each eye and hear faint noises in the distance. Geese can also keep part of their brains and their eyes alert while they sleep. This special unihemispheric slow brain wave state (which essentially means sleeping with half the brain alert) allows a focused vigilance to occur during necessary rest. Great frigatebirds use this watchful sleep mode to stay in flight for weeks over the ocean. https://www.audubon.org/news/scientists-finally-have-evidence-frigatebirds-sleep-while-flying

One of our favorite Sunriver winter scenes is Canada geese (Branta canadensis), perched on one foot, sleeping on the river ice flows. Like a black and white sketch of the surrounding monochrome landscape, their heads draw down curved, black necks which bury into waves of soft brown down. They watch us pass with one eye, barely untucked, open in their half-sleep. Gentle grunt-sighs reassure the rest of the flock we are harmless. The geese’s soothing utterings cushion the sound of our feet crunching the frozen snow.

During the 1900s, the proliferation of lawns, mowed grass, and agricultural fields caused Canada geese to reduce their migrations and increase their populations. Rather than being praised as masters of adaptation for thriving despite loss of their natural habitats, many people view Canada geese as pests. In contrast, wild geese are celebrated by many Native American tribes and First Nations. If you look at indigenous people’s moon calendars, many full moon names relate to geese. For the Northwest Tlingit, January’s full moon is the goose moon, as is the further north Haida’s February full moon. Goose hunting is woven into the cultural fabric of some people. https://www.audubon.org/news/for-these-cree-first-nations-canada-geese-are-central-cultural-revival

If geese are considered a problem in your area, experts suggest replacing grassy areas with native plants and trees. Further, you can support efforts to protect their natural predators like wolves, cougars, and foxes. Some parts of the Deschutes attract large flocks of Canada geese because the unnaturally low winter river levels expose tasty vegetation. Geese are herbivores and normally seek the best access to greens and grains. 

There are sub-species of Canada Goose. In 2004, a group of the smaller sub-species were re-classified as a new separate species called the Cackling Goose. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Cackling_Goose/overview.  Cackling geese have their own sub-species.  For most of us, it is a challenge to distinguish a Cackling from a Canada, so have no shame if you leave figuring out Cackling sub-species to the goose experts!

Every once in a great while, you may see rarer goose species in the Upper Deschutes like an Emperor (https://ebird.org/species/empgoo/US-OR-017), Tundra Bean (Anser serrirostris) or a Brant (https://ebird.org/species/brant/US-OR-017).  You also could come across an escaped domestic or guard goose.

So, next time you hear geese calling from above or encounter a gaggle of geese in a park or out in the wild, consider pausing to listen and notice their details. You may see unusual goose species, plumage, and size variations as well as interesting behaviors.

A migratory shorebird foraging for food in a Sunriver area sewage pond during a September 2022 Cedar Creek Fire smoke event.

 

By Sevilla Rhoads, including a conversation with Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot

Introduction 

Like so many others in Central Oregon, our family spent many days sitting inside these past two months listening to droning air filters. We constantly checked the AQI readings. In the Sunriver area, there were days when the air quality reached the “purple” hazardous level. During those times, a red sun barely shone through the dark gray fog which shrouded our homes.  

Unable to bike, walk, or play outside, we felt sorry for ourselves. Then we saw a bird staggering across the driveway. Lethargic and disheveled, the bird started to open its wings to fly but appeared to give up. It dropped its head and shuffled under the shelter of a parked car where it sat, motionless with eyes half closed. As we looked around, we saw several other birds hunched under shrubs and feeders.

Was the smoke harming the birds? We realized we needed to learn how wildfire smoke impacts wild birds. As I watched a chickadee, sitting motionless in the eerie orange, gray light of another smokey morning, the idiom “canary in a coal mine” came to mind.  

Until around 1986, miners, while underground, carried caged canaries. If the canary suddenly stopped singing or became sick and died, the miners would leave and check for poison gasses. Why were canaries used as gas detectors? We looked it up.  

Smithsonian Magazine says birds are early detectors of dangerous gas because they are so vulnerable to airborne poisons: “Because they need such immense quantities of oxygen to enable them to fly and fly to heights that would make people altitude sick, their anatomy allows them to get a dose of oxygen when they inhale and another when they exhale, by holding air in extra sacs…. Relative to mice or other easily transportable animals that could have been carried in by the miners, they get a double dose of air and any poisons the air might contain, so miners would get an earlier warning.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/story-real-canary-coal-mine-180961570/ 

If birds are so sensitive to poisonous gas that they were used as detectors, what is the impact of wildfire smoke? We decided to look into current research on wildfire smoke and wild birds. Quickly, we noticed most relevant articles quoted or referred to the same researcher, Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot. We noted she recently conducted her research from Seattle, so she is familiar with Northwest birds. Not expecting a busy scientist to respond but feeling this topic was too important not to try, we reached out to Dr. Sanderfoot with our questions.

Not only did Dr. Sanderfoot reply to our email, but she took the time to call and agreed to let us post a summary of our conversation. She generously gave up precious time in her super busy schedule to help us better understand this critical topic for anyone interested in Western U.S. birds. 

As a layperson without any scientific training, I was worried I would get lost when Dr. Sanderfoot explained her research and theories. However, her articulate replies were clear and easy to follow. And, while she carefully walked me through the topic’s science landscape, an unspoken urgency and sincere passion shone through. Here is my summary of our conversation: 

Conversation with Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot 

Conversation with Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot  After thanking Olivia for her time, I launched right into the “burning” question from our internet research: Should my kids and I worry about the birds in the current wildfire smoke? We were not sure because wildfires have occurred for as long as birds have been on the planet. If wildfires are a natural occurrence, have birds adapted? As some say, are the recent fires good because they create new habitats? Canaries were trapped in cages in mines, but wild birds are free to flee.

Smoke can be a cue for birds and animals. Historically, birds and animals may have reacted to smoke in ways that increased their chances of survival. The sight and odor of smoke can trigger an instinct to avoid fire danger. Interestingly, some predators may take advantage of wildfire smoke by preying on fleeing and injured animals on the edge of fires. During fires, birds may be able to escape to places outside the burn perimeter that is unaffected by the smoke.  

Megafires create larger-scale smoke events. Plus, there are far fewer intact ecosystems to which to escape and use as alternative habitats during and after a fire. The question is how birds are impacted by these extensive and longer-lasting smoke periods with fewer available habitats. Are birds’ adaptations to historical fires sufficient? Can birds adapt to the new fire patterns?

Birds are highly vulnerable to air pollution, like the toxic gasses in smoke, because of how they breathe. When flying, birds have a huge need for oxygen. So they have evolved the most efficient respiratory system of all vertebrates. Essentially, birds constantly breathe in. They have relatively small lungs but nine (usually) large air sacs. These air-storing sacs mean air flows continuously in one direction through the birds’ lungs. When a bird inhales, the largest sacs around the abdomen fill with fresh air while pushing air from the last inhale into the lungs. When the bird exhales, the abdominal sacs again push air into the lungs. Before being released from the body, smaller air sacs nearer the throat store and release carbon dioxide from the lungs.  

We do not fully understand how birds manage particulates in the air (i.e. the tiny bits of matter in the air like dust). They have a cough-like action, but it may not be as effective as a human cough for clearing debris because birds have longer, more rigid, and sometimes tightly coiled tracheas. Birds also do not have the same powerful immune system cells in their throats that mammals use to screen out most airborne threats. In addition, more research is needed to know whether birds can clear out dangerous airborne elements with a mucus system. Birds, compared to mammals, have a thinner barrier between blood and gas, which may cause them to absorb fine particulates more easily. For these physical reasons, while more study is needed, birds are highly likely to be more vulnerable than other animals to the health issues caused by inhaling the particulate matter in smoke and other kinds of air pollution. Certainly, smoke impacts bird health, but we still need to understand precisely how, to what extent, and does susceptibility vary by species, age, and sex. 

YouTube videos on avian respiration: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWMmyVu1ueY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mlr_fpQvkg

 

There are relatively few published studies providing scientific data on how wildfire smoke impacts the health of wild birds and their populations – or any other taxa of wildlife, for that matter. In an international database of scientific papers, Sanderfoot and her team found that only six studies have directly examined birds and smoke. None provides a detailed examination of a species resident to the Northwest. One study investigated the impacts of smoke on a goose species that migrates through the Northwest, including a stop at Summer Lake in Central Oregon. 

There are approximately forty-one studies on how wildfire smoke impacts animals. Some of that data is useful when developing theories on how severe fires impact Western U.S. birds. Taken together, the animal studies, some of which focused on livestock or animals from other areas, like Indonesian Hornbills and Cuban Parrots, indicate that smoke from megafires is highly likely to negatively impact many of our wild bird species, both in regard to individual health and population numbers.  

Olivia and her team are working to understand better the impacts of wildfire smoke on wild birds and their causes, so they can contribute this data to the strategies and decisions addressing Western U.S. megafires. 

While Olivia was not involved in the migrating goose research referenced in her team’s overview paper, she points to it as an interesting example of a recent study investigating smoke impacts on birds. Here is a link to the goose study: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.3552. This study looked at how wildfire smoke may have impacted the migration of four Tule Greater White-fronted Geese (Anser albifrons elgasi). The tules usually migrate from Alaska through British Columbia and Washington State, then down to Summer Lake, Oregon, for a stopover before heading south to winter in California. 

 In 2020, there were areas of thick wildfire smoke along the tule’s typical migration route through Canada and Washington. Scientists tracked four tules with GPS collars to observe how they responded to the dense smoke on their route. The research showed the geese flew further and traveled longer when heavy smoke was on their route. Wildfire smoke seemed to cause the geese to stop, change direction, alter behaviors, and fly at different heights than usual.  

Here is an excerpt regarding the extent of the wildfire smoke in the Pacific Northwest migration areas for the 2020 study: “We observed impacts to individual migratory behavior at smoke concentrations averaging 161 µgm−3. At ground surface elevations, smoke concentrations exceeded this threshold across a geographic extent 27 times greater than the area burned by wildfires. However, at observed migration altitudes (<4,000m), this smoke concentration covered an area 44 times larger than the wildfires themselves, encompassing 64% of four western states (California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) and effectively transecting the Pacific Flyway.”  

Migration delays and challenges can be fatal. Migration is when birds use the most energy. Birds evolved sophisticated strategies to survive these grueling journeys, including timing and routes designed to conserve and replenish critical energy supplies. Even minor interruptions can have devastating impacts. The tule study authors note that “continuing reductions in wetland extent within the Northern Great Basin” already make it harder for migrating waterfowl to find quality resting and refueling stops.

The four tule geese experienced significant issues in 2020. To avoid smoke, one tule ended up separating from the flock and prevailing winds took it to Idaho where it was the first confirmed tule ever to visit that state. Several of the geese floated for up to 72 hours on the Pacific, waiting for the smoke to clear. Those that tried flying over smoke plumes had to climb to higher altitudes in flocks that became disorganized and dispersed to atypical migration habitats. While all four tules finally made it to Summer Lake, on average they used up four times the energy and traveled over 470 miles further than usual. Their trips were more than double a tule’s average migration duration.  

The amount of extra energy these tules expended to get to Summer Lake in 2020 could result in a need to feed for an additional four to six days to survive the migration. Significantly, the study states: “Energy deficits such as we describe, especially when occurring in the context of incomplete knowledge of available food resource locations, can lead to increased mortality or reproductive rates insufficient to maintain goose populations (Klaasen et al. 2005).”  

The tule study is a single look at four geese for one migration during a historic smoke event. This research may be limited, but at a minimum, it points to a time-sensitive need for more information. Wildfires and associated smoke pollution may pose a serious compounding threat when U.S. bird populations are already declining at a rate considered by many ornithologists as highly concerning. 

The other forty relevant animal studies find some smoke-related harm, including impacts on vital rates, such as survival and reproduction. Olivia and her team compiled this information in a literature review published in Environmental Research Letters in January. (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac30f6). Her team concluded: “Although studies that directly investigated effects of smoke on wildlife were few in number, they show that wildfire smoke contributes to adverse acute and chronic health outcomes in wildlife and influences animal behavior.”  

Running out of time to talk, I asked Olivia a final question. Inspired by my desire to end on a hopeful note and being a parent wanting a positive future for my kids, I need action items our family can take to help the Sunriver area birds we love and enjoy. So I asked Olivia what, other than supporting research efforts like hers, we can do to address the increasing smoke issues facing birds in our area.  

My summary of Olivia’s response: 

Fire suppression is a contributing factor to increased wildfire activity, so it will be important to execute carefully planned and managed prescribed burns or other safe and wildlife-friendly understory reduction efforts. There are many questions and caveats to consider when planning controlled burns and forest thinning, but these efforts may be necessary. These measures should be conducted in ways that enhance rather than degrade ecosystems.  

Greenhouse gases contribute to the temperature increases that dry forest fuels. So, we can all consider ways to decrease those emissions on the personal and policy levels. 

When birds face smoke event stressors, they need habitats where they can build up their strength before fires and where they can recover after the burn. These include safe places to forage, rest, and perhaps relocate and live if their habitat was destroyed by fire. Bird-friendly habitats include native plants and animals, clean water, and food sources. These habitats could be in your garden, common areas, or land over which you have some control. Consider volunteering to help create bird-friendly habitats on public land and private areas being restored or managed by conservation groups. 

When birds’ systems are compromised by smoke inhalation, they may be susceptible to more serious health issues if they are exposed to toxic forms of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and poisonous substances like lead. So, consider non-toxic ways to manage land and pests.  

If you have bird feeders and baths, make sure they are clean. Birds sickened by smoke inhalation may better survive if they do not pick up a virus or bacteria. Watch for local notices about bird diseases and follow guidelines to prevent more cases. 

Citizen science helps researchers. Contribute by submitting eBird lists before, during, and after smoke events. Consider adding the AQI or a note about recent or nearby smoke areas to your comment section and the weather conditions. Of course, when birding, you should follow fire and smoke closure rules and health advisories. 

Have your local bird rescue and care contact information on hand during smoke events. You may encounter birds impacted by smoke inhalation or fire. Consider seeking expert advice on how to address bird injuries and illness.  

I thanked Olivia for her important work, kindness, and commitment to public education. 
She provided several links to relevant talks for those interested in learning more: 

Recent talks: 

Up In Smoke: How will birds respond to smoke pollution in the age of megafires? Wildfires and animals in the age of megafires

Recent news stories and related research: https://ovsanderfoot.com/news/ 

Sunriver’s Autumn Colors – Wood Warblers

By Sevilla Rhoads
Thank you to Chuck Gates for his time reviewing our bird blog posts for accuracy.

In autumn, Sunriver’s conifers may not turn the brilliant colors of deciduous trees like Maples, but our forests have their own fall show: Migrating warblers. Starting in late summer, especially in the mornings as the Fall mists rise from the rivers and streams, you may notice shrubs and trees, particularly along waterway edges, twitch and rustle even when there is no breeze. No, Sunriver’s plants are not trying to give you a pre-Halloween scare. Pause and quietly peer into the foliage shadows. You will likely start to see flashes and streaks of yellow deep within. Stay still, and soon will emerge little fluffy heads with dark eyes, furtively checking for predators before hopping out to grab insects. You will be amazed that all these brightly colored and fast-moving birds, now dashing about picking bugs off leaves and out of the air, were almost invisible just moments before.  

In the mornings at this time of year, thousands of warblers sneak about Central Oregon’s vegetation. While desperately trying to avoid predators, they eat as much as possible to fuel their grueling migration journeys. Most of these birds flew all night before dropping down to hide and feed in places like Sunriver’s willows, grasses, and pines.

According to BirdCast, the night before I wrote this post (September 20th), an estimated 285,300 migratory birds flew over Deschutes County. On average, they were about 1,200 feet up and traveling south-southwest at a speed of around 19 miles an hour. If you are curious how many birds flew over you last night, you can put your county name into the Birdcast search box and find out: https://birdcast.info/

 

If you wake up during the night in autumn, consider opening the window and listening. If it is quiet enough, perhaps you will hear the soft calls from the thousands of birds passing over you. Warblers constantly call each other during these night flights for reasons not entirely understood by researchers. 

Look at the moon, especially with a telescope or binoculars. You may make out the shadowy movement of these vast flocks. Some birds could fly lower down and pass right outside your window.

You may notice most of us in the Sunriver area turn off our outside lights at night, and there are few street lamps. Scientists think birds migrate at night primarily to navigate by the stars, so they need us to reduce the amount of artificial light during migration season. Other reasons for nocturnal travel are more favorable winds, cooler temperatures, and fewer aerial predators. https://www.birdnote.org/listen/shows/nocturnal-migration-songbirds. 

Several great places to watch in the mornings for the warblers that have dropped down from their night flights are the footbridge by the Sunriver Resort where the bike trail goes towards the airport and also the bridge over the Deschutes at the Benham Falls East day use/trailhead. The willows around these bridges are often full of birds during migration season.

Watching Sunriver’s autumn warbler show, we are fairly certain we see every shade of yellow possible. Especially during September, there are young birds in varying stages of developing plumage, and many adults are molting. These changes in feather color can make it hard to identify the species. Still, the scruffy and motley birds, often leaving little puffs of feathers in their wake, are fun to watch.

There are quite a few species of warbler that live and migrate through the Sunriver area. Most commonly seen in Sunriver are the Yellow-rumped, Yellow, Orange-crowned, Common Yellowthroat, and Wilson’s Warblers. The Nashville, Townsend’s, and MacGillivray’s Warblers are a little less often seen here. The Black-throated Gray and Hermit Warblers are uncommon.  

Here is a US Forest Service guide to warblers in Central Oregon: https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/deschutes/learning/nature-science/?cid=stelprdb5274681

If you are interested in seeing the less common warblers, you only need to head a half hour or so into the higher elevation areas of the Deschutes National Forest to places like the Fall River Guard Station, North and South Twin Lakes, Crane Prairie and along the Deschutes in the Wickiup area. Consider checking the local eBird map to see where birders are finding the species you hope to see.

In Sunriver, the Yellow-rumped is the most visible of our resident warblers. Affectionally called ‘Butter Butts’ by birders; these handsome birds seem to be the least shy warbler. They sometimes sit out in the open, watching for opportunities to catch a bug or chase a rival. Warblers mainly feed by picking insects off plants but can also catch prey on the wing.

Yellow and Orange-crowned can be shyer than Butter Butts. Still, they will come out into the open to grab an irresistibly tasty-looking caterpillar. Especially during the breeding season, Yellow Warbler males have red streaks down their chests as if they flew through a wet paint sunset, but in the autumn, their breasts sport varying shades of yellow, so they look like fluffy lemons in all stages of ripening! 

We hardly ever see the orange crown of an Orange-crowned, so do not be misled by the name when trying to find one. Where Yellow Warblers are a study in yellows with touches of green (mostly on their backs), Orange-crowneds pick up the color study on the green end of the yellow spectrum such that they are a feast of olive tones. If you see an Orange-crowned foraging in our local Willows, they precisely match this plant’s hues.  

With their stylish black berets, male Wilson’s Warblers look like they should be carrying a baguette under one wing. In the autumn, some males have black flecks rather than caps, so they and the females can look much like Yellow Warblers. 

You are not alone if you confuse Yellow, Orange-crowned, and Wilson’s Warblers! Sometimes, especially in the autumn, it is hard to tell them apart because they overlap in their overall color and size. If you feel up to the challenge of accurate identification, there are subtle differences in eye ring shape, under tail color, bill size, and markings, but you can also just sit back and enjoy them without knowing who is who. 

Common Yellowthroat Warblers lurk in the riverside shrubs like bandits ready to ambush. When the males suddenly emerge, their black masks are startling, offset by white and yellow. But don’t blink in surprise for too long because they quickly turn their grey-green backs on you and dash back into the shadows. The females usually keep a low profile and look quite different than their flashy partners.

If the warbler you’re admiring seems to have a brighter white eye ring and the gray head coloration seems more pronounced, you might be seeing a Nashville or a MacGillivray’s. These ‘hoody’ birds can suddenly pop out of the brush with an astonished look. The surprised look is due to their bright white eyeliner, which is entirely around the Nashville’s eye and in two halves around the top and bottom of the MacGillivray’s eye.  

Most often higher up in the pine trees, you can sometimes spot a Townsend’s Warbler around Sunriver. They have striking black and yellow facial markings.  

If you see a similar warbler without the Townsend’s clearly defined face stripes, it could be a juvenile or female Townsend’s or the even less often seen Hermit Warbler. Hermit Warblers are actually relatively common and numerous in our forests, but they live up to their Hermit name by usually staying far up in the canopy silhouetted against the sky.

A real treat for Sunriver birders is spotting the Black-throated Gray Warbler. At first glance, you might mistake this bird for a Mountain Chickadee with its overall black, gray, and white appearance, but look more closely because the shape and markings are different. And, there might be a little yellow dot behind the bill.

Finally, a rare warbler comes through this area every now and then. For various reasons, some warblers stray from their usual migration route, ending far beyond their expected range. It is exciting to discover one of these vagrants. For example, last year a ten year old walking with his family just south of Sunriver, found a Bay-breasted Warbler which turned out to be the first ever recorded sighting of this species in Central Oregon! So, if you can’t identify a warbler using a western species list, check a guide showing all North American warblers, just in case….

Ready to go out and enjoy the fall warblers? Here is a fun guide to watching (and drawing) warblers written by Christine Elder, a local nature illustrator and educator: https://christineelder.com/warblers/.

Also, Sunriver Nature Center offers guided bird walks – just call and ask about ways to join local birders and Center educators. Everyone is welcome at the Nature Center and there are walks for all skill levels.

Mourning Dove

(Zenaida macroura)

By Sevilla Rhoads
Thank you to Chuck Gates for his time reviewing our bird blog posts for accuracy.

We recently lost a much-loved family pet. We processed our grief while quietly walking in the forests around Sunriver. The soft and plaintiff cooing of our resident Mourning Doves seemed to perfectly express feelings for which we had no words. Often taken for granted as a common background bird, our faithfully present Mourning Doves rise into our awareness just when we need them with their poignant, gentle wail and comforting subtle beauty.

Few birds are as seeped in historical symbolism across cultures as the dove. Something about these birds moves humans so deeply that we find them embedded in the writings, art, and oral histories of many cultures across time and continents. For most Americans, the dove evokes associations with both grief and peace. Perhaps people connect the pain of loss and the desire for peace in the dove’s haunting calls?

It was Pablo Picasso’s Guernica painting depicting war suffering that inspired the request he paint the dove chosen to symbolize peace at the first International Peace Conference in 1949. Picasso named his daughter Paloma which is the Spanish word for dove.  

The Mourning Dove is one of our most widespread and numerous native land birds. Fossil records indicate these doves have been in North America for over ten thousand years. Mourning Doves can live in almost any habitat except dense forests and wetlands, and they often adapt well to human development. U.S. Mourning Dove populations have expanded to an estimated 350 million. There is comfort knowing we share this bird with almost everyone across the mainland U.S. Perhaps others around the country also notice this dove’s calls at just the right time for them.  

Somewhat befitting their tragic cries, on average, Mourning Dove adults only live for a year. Despite such short lives, they still gain in population because this species can breed from as early as February through as late as October and can start a new nest as soon as thirty days after starting the last one. They typically lay two eggs at a time, and the young fledge in about a month. Perhaps the coo of the dove is so familiar to us because of the frequency they are wooing and courting each other.  

For the first three or four days of a Mourning Dove chick’s life, the male and female parents feed them ‘crop milk.’ This immune-boosting antioxidant-rich milky liquid comes from special cells in the parents’ crops. The chicks drink it directly from the parents’ beaks. Crop milk is unique to pigeons, doves, Flamingos, and some penguin species (Yes, an odd assortment!).  

U.S. hunters harvest over 20 million Mourning Doves a year. Doves and pigeons were food for many native tribes and were a welcome addition to the meager diets of the early pioneers. The culinary term Squab once referred to doves as well as pigeons and often appeared on American restaurant menus until the idea of eating pigeons fell out of favor. 

Originally, dovecotes were towers designed to attract roosting doves and pigeons, so the tower’s owner had a ready source of meat, especially in winter. In Europe, dovecotes were considered a status symbol and there was even a medieval law prohibiting ‘commoners’ from having dovecotes.  

Mourning Doves are in the same bird family, Columbidae, as pigeons. Somewhat similar in size and shape, you could mistake the two, but Sunriver has very few pigeons. On a rare occasion, a wild Band-tailed Pigeon might come through the area, and once in a while, a flock of the ‘city’ pigeons (officially called Rock Pigeons) might pay us a quick visit from places like Bend. So, while pigeons are considered a messy pest in many parts of this county, they are a special sighting for Sunriver birders.  

In addition to Mourning Doves, there are two other dove species you might see here. One, the White-winged Dove, is extremely rare for this area, with eBird only listing a total of 13 Deschutes County sightings. If you see a dove with clear white wing bars, take a photograph and consider submitting the sighting to Cornell’s eBird.  eBird is a free citizen science App.   Reporting rare sightings on eBird helps researchers and may contribute to conservation efforts.  

The other dove species, the Eurasian Collared-Dove, while less often seen in Sunriver than Mourning Doves, is becoming more common.  Overall, Eurasian Collared-Doves are similar in color and shape to Mourning Doves but often appear paler, slightly larger and sport a partial dark collar rather than the body spots of a Mourning Dove. These literally collared doves are not native; rather, as you might guess from their name, they originated in Europe.  

The story of how Collared-Doves came to Oregon is quite interesting. Before the 1970s, there weren’t any wild Collared-Doves in North America. Now there are an estimated 85 million. Most believe the first wild Collared-Doves originated from a pet store in the Bahamas that sold this imported European species as an exotic domestic bird. In 1974, the store was burglarized, and, during the crime, the robber let about fifty Collared-Doves escape. Some say the release might not have been accidental with the owner having a motive to get rid of some birds pending a federal investigation into illegally imported species. Helped by hurricanes over the next few years, some of the escapee Collared-Doves were blown to Florida where they began their colonization of the mainland. Their population and range rapidly increased so that you can now find Collared-Doves across the nation in every state. Research does not find these invasive doves harm the native birds, but they are competition for food when it is scarce and can carry diseases that impact native species.     

The scientific name for Eurasian Collared-Doves is Streptopelia decaocto.  The second half of this name relates to an ancient Greek myth about call of this species:  A maid was angry she worked too hard for only eighteen coins, so she begged the gods to tell the world how little her mistress paid her. Hearing her plea, Zeus created Collared-Doves to forever call out “Deca-octo” which means eighteen coins.   

As I write this post, it is an early summer morning, and most Sunriver birds are relatively quiet at this time of year. Aside from a few distant geese, the only calls are those of the Mourning Doves. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brown Creeper

(Certhia americana)

By Sevilla Rhoads
Thank you to Chuck Gates for his time reviewing our bird blog posts for accuracy.

One reason to pause and notice birds, even if you are not a birder, is to deepen your experience. As you watch and learn about a bird, another world paralleling your own is revealed. We become aware of other lives playing out alongside ours, full of tender and troubled relationships, awe-inspiring survival tales, tragedies, triumphs, mysteries, and even life lessons and wisdom. Discovering these stories can wake our child-like curiosity and excitement. Another layer of life opens to us and enriches the moment.  

It is especially thrilling to discover a secret life hidden in plain sight. Like when reading fairy tales, our imaginations are tickled by the idea of little beings existing outside the awareness of all but the keenest, most patient seekers. Sunriver has its very own such forest creatures. The Brown Creeper literally creeps around Sunriver, evading detection right before our eyes. Invisible like a shape-shifter, if a Creeper moves, you rub your eyes in disbelief because a piece of bark seems to have come to life.    

The Creeper is a common Sunriver bird, yet few have seen or know it. A mosaic of wood colors, its back perfectly matches the tree trunks where it feeds and nests. The Creeper prefers the interiors of mature tree stands, where it uses a relatively long curved bill to pry out insects from bark cracks. Downward curved beaks are called ‘decurved.’ Having such a long and bent bill does make bath time rather challenging trying to reach all your feathers for preening. Can you imagine trying to wash your neck if you had to use a long curved, and sharp nose? Observing a Creeper preening demonstrates how well they can balance on their stiff tails while they engage in pretzel-yoga cleaning poses.

Mostly dining on insects, Creepers have a distinctive SOP forage procedure where they start near the base of a tree then circle up and around the trunk, climbing and poking about in the crevices. When they get near the top, they usually fly down, like a fluttering leaf, to the bottom of another suitable nearby tree and start again. Not surprisingly, a flock of Creepers is known as a Spiral. 

Nuthatches move down trees as they feed, so the traffic flow on Sunriver’s Ponderosas is similar to our roads with two directions. We wonder if a nuthatch and Creeper have ever bumped into each other!  

Another difference between Creepers and Nuthatches is the Creeper’s need for more mature groups of trees. The Forest Service and other similar organizations consider Brown Creepers to be an ‘indicator species’ because their population numbers help determine the health of the forest. Creepers have evolved to eat the insects in deeper cracks which are most visible and accessible to creatures moving upwards. Nuthatches glean the insects closer to the surface which are more accessible and visible from the birds’ downward direction. Woodpeckers peck holes so they can reach the bugs beneath the bark surface. So our native trees have specialist insect eaters for each layer of their bark! 

Often Creepers make tiny high-pitched squeaky sounds as they hunt. Usually, these sounds are how birders find Creepers. At any time of year in Sunriver, away from the noise of cars and such, stand as quietly as you can in a wooded area and listen. First, you will probably hear our Mountain Chickadees making various small sounds, but keep listening as the Creeper peep is a whisper in comparison. In the winter, such listening might lead you to find a flock of Golden-crowned Kinglets who also emit tiny pips, but normally the littlest chirps lead you to Creepers.   

We often wonder why birds, like Creepers, Kinglets, and Chickadees, chat to each other while feeding. Surely being quiet is a better survival trait? Creepers have evolved near-perfect camouflage yet give away their position to patient listeners by constantly talking. Ornithologists studying these ‘contact’ or ‘close’ calls are not sure exactly why certain species babble at each other. Some think it is a way birds stay in touch about their position because a properly spaced flock provides some predator protection.

Creepers usually build nests under loose strips of bark on larger trees. They use various materials like moss and feathers to create a hammock-shaped pouch. The most surprising nest material is lots of spider cocoons. Why would birds stuff their homes with spider egg cases which then hatch into hundreds of baby spiders? There are various theories, but no one is entirely sure. Some think the egg cases provide a natural glue to help stick the nest together. Others believe the baby spiders are an excellent food source for the tiny newly hatched chicks.  

Spider eggs are a smart snack option because the baby spiders provide a fresh and plentiful buffet when they hatch in the nest. Plus, they are a healthy choice because spiders are not only packed with protein but also contain a high dose of an amino acid called taurine. Scientists found that developing chicks fed taurine had improved eyesight and intelligence and perhaps were even less anxious and more courageous. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070824220328.htm. That is quite the kid multi-vitamin!  

Another popular but debated theory is that parent Creepers fill the nest with spider eggs to protect their chicks from troublesome and sometimes deadly mites. In one lab study, the newly hatched spiders ate the nest mites. Whatever the reason, Creepers and Wrens collect many different kinds of spider eggs for their nests, with studies finding up to fifty different spider species in one nest! 

Oregon has over five hundred spider species, and, at least according to the state’s Department of Agriculture, our local spiders have not caused any significant medical issues. https://www.oregon.gov/oda/shared/Documents/Publications/IPPM/OregonSpidersFactAndFiction.pdf. So, next time we encounter a spider in our house, we’ll put it outside for the Creepers and Wrens.  According to All About Birds, a single spider is enough energy for a Creeper to climb about two hundred feet.

Nature can be a form of art gallery experience where we walk through a show of infinite creative design. Finding a Creeper to watch is like encountering a collage that took the artist over a thousand years of blending complementary tones into an almost perfect Ponderosa-resonate pattern. Camouflage can be an art form – several members of The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter), a German expressionist art group, like Franz Marc and Paul Klee, used their artist sensibilities to create Kandinsky-inspired camouflage when drafted into the First World War. Perhaps due to the piece’s history feeling more relevant with the war in Ukraine, Franz Marc’s The Foxes just sold for over fifty-five million dollars. Luckily for us, seeing a Brown Creeper in Sunriver’s ‘nature gallery’ is free so long as we preserve our mature tree stands. 

While the Brown Creeper only lives in North America, Europe has an almost identical treecreeper species.  It is entirely possible that Franz Marc, who drew inspiration from forests and birds, looked up from painting aircraft camouflage to admire and draw joy from a Creeper’s design. Sadly, Franz was killed in battle just before his draft-release papers reached him.  To see one of his last bird paintings, try https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46223210

For some incredible photos of bird camouflage, see https://www.audubon.org/news/these-amazing-images-show-how-good-bird-camouflage-can-be

To learn more about Brown Creepers see https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Brown_Creeper

 

 

 

 

 

Killdeer

(Charadrius vociferus)

By Sevilla Rhoads
Thank you to Chuck Gates for his time reviewing our bird blog posts for accuracy.

Distressed cries echo insistently across Sunriver’s meadows, so you look around in concern. A bird is flailing and dragging a limp wing along the ground. You slowly approach and follow to see if you need to help. Suddenly, the bird lifts off, flying perfectly away with a squeal of what sounds like teasing laughter. Yup, you were duped by a Killdeer!  

Killdeer draw predators away by pretending to be wounded. They need this Oscar-worthy distraction technique because they like to hang out and nest in exposed open areas. They forage for small creatures and seeds by running and, often rather conspicuously, bobbing along mudflats and places where the grass or other vegetation is primarily short. Their nests, relying on camouflage and distraction defense, are just shallow scrapings out in the open.

Likely our most theatrically-talented local birds, Killdeer never miss a chance to put on a show. Known as the Noisy or Chattering Plover, the scientific name for Killdeer, vociferus, means shouting or yelling. Want some fresh air while watching daytime soap operas? Give Sunriver’s Killdeers any excuse, and they will carry on dramatically with prolonged lamentations accompanied by much fussing around.  

They are so bold, especially for a relatively small bird, Killdeer even have a performance designed to stop large hoofed animals from trampling their nests – they puff up, fan their tail over their head and charge operatically towards the beast to change its path. If Richard Wagner had been a birder, perhaps we would have Der Ring Das Killdeer rather than Nibelungen?

There is quite a bit of study and debate about distraction displays in birds and animals. My kids wonder how Killdeer survive when these birds do the opposite of quietly fleeing or hiding in the face of danger. Surely, most become prey if they brazenly encourage predators to follow them or, worse, run straight towards the potential killers? Amazingly, research shows that very few are captured by engaging in these risky defenses. Distraction display is a surprisingly effective survival tactic against native predators.     

Killdeer performances include a fake brooding act. Near their nest, they scrape out some extra look-a-like nests. When a predator approaches, a Killdeer might run over and put on a show of protecting the empty scrape to fool the predator away from the actual eggs or chicks. 

Some Killdeer cousins, like Golden Plovers, and perhaps Killdeer themselves, include a rodent impersonation in their repertoire. To lure away hawks and owls (Killdeer can forage at night), they ruffle feathers to look more like fur, pull their wings over their heads, stick out their tails, and even squeak to convince hunters they are tastier mammals.  

Killdeer acting only distracts predators who hunt by sight and sound, not those which hunt by scent, especially at night.  Ever the trickster, during nesting season, the Killdeer stops producing its scented preen oil and generates an odorless chemical instead.

Not only are the costumes and special effects impressive, but researchers think plovers are sophisticated enough to tailor their choice of disguise to the type of predator. Killdeer are Sunriver’s Hollywood stars, directors, and scriptwriters all in one bird!  

Some of our local Killdeer move to warmer areas for the winter, but a hardy few stay year-round. Despite being North America’s most common shorebird, the why and when of Killdeer migration is not well understood. Perhaps because Killdeer make a point of being seen and are not too shy to live near humans, most of us do not realize we have lost about half their population since the late sixties. The steepest decline is here on the western side of the country.

Research shows enough Killdeer survive against their natural predators, but these birds have not evolved to avoid vehicles, buildings, and chemicals like pesticides. Even an award-worthy Killdeer performance is useless against a loud off-road vehicle heading for the chicks (Killdeer like nesting on gravel and dirt tracks which remind them of clearings in their native habitats).  And a Killdeer, foraging for snails, insects, and their larvae, has not developed a way to know if a field or lawn was treated with pesticides and herbicides.  

On a lighter note, when we have a hard day and need cheering up, we browse plover fledgling photos. Killdeer (and other plovers) have adorable offspring with ridiculously long legs, big Anime or Manga-style eyes, and more down feathers than seem possible on such a tiny body.  Sitting quietly this summer, near Sunriver’s meadows or river banks, you might see Killdeer young. 

These chicks are born ready to run about and usually follow the parents out of the nest scrape on their second day of life. Both parents incubate and raise the young. On particularly hot days (which we seem to have more often), you might see both the male and female dampening their wings in some water, then standing with wings partially spread over the nest to shade and cool the eggs. This couple can try up to five times to have a successful brood and often raise two sets of kids a season.  

To learn more about the Killdeer see: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Killdeer/overview