May Recap
In case you missed it you can find last month's newsletter here: may newsletter
may drawing competition
Last month we held another drawing contest.
I recieved nearly half a dozen submissions and narrowed it down to a top 4.
I couldn't figure out how to add a poll to this site to do a group vote..
and each had their own style so I struggled to rank them and so with that in mind I decided to mark them all as winners.
Besides the last place place drawing of course.
In no particular order our first winner is Tiffany with her drawings of penguins, a bushtit, and a western tanager
Member Submissions
Thank you to everyone who sent me photos of the birds they saw! 16 people sent in photos! This site will probably load slower then ever :)
Adam A. redeemed himself with some cool bird sightings. In Prospect Park in Brooklyn he saw a red-winged blackbird and a wood duck
Erin saw plenty of birds this month including barn swallows, california scrub-jays, marsh wrens, and gallinules on her trip to Coyote Hills in Fremont
Katie saw a white-breasted nuthatch taking off from a fence post
Adam C. saw our state bird, the California quail, hanging out on a fence.
Katlyn managed to get real close to a black phoebe and also saw what looks like a house finch while birding in golden gate park.
Gus and Anjali saw a California scrub jay in Washington state. I think that's a sign that they should move back to california:)
Emily and James saw some cool birds including an american robin, a red-tailed hawk near its nest, a canada goose family, a northern harrier in flight, and the chonkiest raven ive ever seen in my life.
Sarah saw a magpie while on a business trip in Colorado
Sandy saw some house sparrows and european starlings during an east coast trip as well as some mourning doves in the east bay.
Rick saw a red-shouldered hawk in the east bay.
Aarsh saw an egret third wheeling with a pair of ducks and also what he is calling a dalmation hummingbird but is most likely just an anna's hummingbird fledgeling
Carol saw a dark-eyed junco and a pair of mallards while birding in golden gate park
Heidi saw a pileated woodpecker and a female nesting cardinal over in the Hudson Valley region of New York. The pileated woodpeckers have pretty sweet mohawks and are the largest living woodpecker species in north america!
Frank was sent this picture of our bird of the month, the great blue heron, with a rodent from a co-worker while in Florida on a business trip. This hunting behavior was described in one of the fun facts last month!
Janet spotted this chonky white-crowned sparrow in the city.
I spotted a pair of hooded orioles in downtown. I snapped this picture of the female but they flew a away before a could get a picture of the male:( I also saw a chestnut-backed chickadee and a cooper's hawk in the east bay. I was inside a house when I heard a loud bang on the window and when I looked outside I saw a flurry of feathers and on the lawn was a cooper's hawk with what looked like a mourning dove in its talons. It then flew off with the dove. The window had some blood and seeds which must have come from the dove. Pretty metal..
Spotlight Bird: Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica)
For no particular reason the barn swallow is this month's bird of the month. Though they start to arrive here early spring they spend breeding season here so they make for a good choice as the bird of the month for one of our summer months.
Fun Barn Swallow Facts:
- they make mud nests and mostly make them in man-made structures
- they are the national bird of estonia and estonian legend has it that if you kill one you will become blind
- they eat insects; it's mostly flies
- they have cool forked tails and are very acrobatic flyers
- they have a cool symbiosis with ospreys where the swallows will make their nest right under the osprey's nest and the swallow's noisy alarm calls will alert the ospreys of intruders and in turn the ospreys will scare away any swallow predators
- they normally raise two broods in a season and reuse the same nest; fledgelings from the first brood sometimes help raise the hatchlings from the second brood.
June Birding Walk
It's time for another birding walk! This time we will be back in the city limits and explore Golden Gate Park.
I've only birded GGP a handful of times so the exact location is TBD
but I'm thinking one of the bodies of water like Blue Heron Lake or North Lake.
The birding walk will be on the saturday morning of June 21st.
Head to the partiful link for more info and I'll update it with a more exact location closer to the date.
Closeout
That's all; happy birding