This is the second in a multipart series introducing birds typically found in valley and foothill areas of Northern California. The following “bird bios” describe birds you’re likely to see in heavily wooded areas and woodsy edges, such as in and near Lower Bidwell Park in Chico. These brief descriptions are excerpted from The Birds of Bidwell Park, a handy field guide that offers many more details, as well as finely drawn illustrations by Carol Burr, to help you identify regional birds. At last report the book was available in Chico at Bird in Hand, Made in Chico, C Bar D Feed Store, and ABC Books (next to La Comida). —Editor
The American Robin is perhaps the most familiar of all birds in the US., and although it has the reputation of being the first indication of spring, it is resident over almost all of the U.S. in summer and winter and can be found almost anywhere in Bidwell Park any time of year. The male’s robin-red breast is distinctive; the female is a bit duller, and immature birds have a spotted breast. Most robins that breed in far northern North America migrate south, so robins are more abundant in winter than summer in the park. About ten inches in length, robins can be seen mainly in woodlands, gardens, orchards, lawns, and fields, preferring open ground for foraging, with a few scattered trees and shrubs for nesting and roosting. Suburban, park, and agricultural areas provide these habitats, so American Robins are common near human habitation. This bird forages on a wide variety of fruits and berries, worms, grubs, and caterpillars. In summer it is often seen on lawns in the morning looking for earthworms; in winter its diet is made up largely of berries.
The Spotted Towhee gets its name from the spots on the wing and back and its “tow-hee” call. Once called the Rufous-Sided Towhee, the species has been split into the Western Spotted Towhee and the Eastern Towhee. Typically seen as individuals, they can be heard scratching on the ground with both feet at once, Uncovering invertebrates and seeds under leaves and twigs. Towhees are easy to distinguish as they do a two-footed backwards hop during foraging, eating mainly seeds, although in the breeding season they prefer arthropods. About the size of a robin, the male, with its rusty sides, black head, and white belly, is unmistakable. The female color pattern is much the same except that where he is black, she is brownish and a bit duller.
Spotted Towhees live and nest in thickets and at the edges of brushy woodlands, gardens, and shrubby park areas. They occasionally sun themselves, lying down on the grass with feathers spread.
The California Towhee is a fairly nondescript bird. Both sexes are a dull brown overall with rust underneath the tail and buff or rust-colored streaks at the throat. Around ten inches in length with a longish tail, it gives the appearance of a large dull colored sparrow. A permanent resident of the far west coast from Southern Oregon to Baja California, it is common in Northern California and can be seen all over Chico and Bidwell Park. It nests from chaparral vegetation into the lower mountain slope.
California Towhees are most often seen as individuals rather than groups. When disturbed or frightened, the towhee will run like a mouse rather than fly. A group of towhees is called a “teapot.”
The Northern Mockingbird is perhaps best known for singing all night. Songbirds begin to sing in response to the amount of daylight, and the sequential singing of songbirds in the morning is known as the “dawn chorus.” On overcast days, the chorus starts later. Mockingbirds are stimulated to sing by a small amount of light, even moonlight, and can imitate a large variety of songs of other birds as well as those of insects, although it is arguable how accurate these imitations are. Only the unmated males sing at night; males with a mate sing only during the day. An individual Mockingbird may have a repertoire of up to 200 songs and tends to repeat each of them twice. Mostly gray in color, their robin-size body of about ten inches, long down-curved bill, long black tail with white outer tail feathers, and obvious large white patches in their wings make them easy to identify, especially in flight.
The Western Scrub Jay is a familiar bird of lowland forests, brushy areas, backyards, and birdfeeders. The scrub Jay, as its name implies, inhabits scrub and brushy areas but is common in parks, gardens, and backyards. These birds are common, especially in the lower park. Patterned in blue, gray, and white, these nearly foot-long birds are well known for their appearance, tameness, and raucous call. They feed on small animals such as insects, lizards, frogs, mammals, and birds, and in the winter, nuts, seeds, and acorns. They will occasionally peck through the bottom of the nest of a nesting bird to eat the eggs or young birds. This behavior and their harsh call have given them a rather unsavory reputation
Like others of the jay and crow family, scrub jays are quite intelligent. They cache acorns in the soil, sometimes covering the burial site with a leaf, and remember where the caches are months later. They will also steal acorns from other jays’ caches. If a jay notices another jay watching it bury its cache, the jay will return later to move the cache in order not to be burglarized by the observing jay.
Signs of the Acorn Woodpecker are all over the park. Just look for trees that have numerous thumb-sized holes. These are called granary trees. The holes were made by Acorn Woodpeckers in order to store acorns. The birds hammer the acorns into the holes and when they want to eat the nut, they come back and peck the shell open. Wedging acorns into these holes deters crows, jays, squirrels, and others from burglarizing the acorn cache. Fresh acorns dry out and shrink, so the birds have to maintain the granary by moving the acorns to smaller holes. The birds will also eat tree sap and the insects attracted to it; they also sally out from a perch to catch flying insects in mid-air and forage for berries and seeds.
A medium-sized woodpecker, the adult is black on the back and wings and throat with a white underside and upper base of the tail. The adult male has a red cap with a creamy white forehead and throat. The female has a smaller red cap with a black forehead and white below.
The Nuttall's Woodpecker is a small woodpecker, a little more than seven inches long. Like most woodpeckers, it is mostly black and white; it has a series of bars across its back and wings, and a black tail. The male has a red patch on his head. The nine-inch Acorn Woodpecker is larger with a black back, the six-and-a-half-inch Downy Woodpecker has a white stripe on its back and the eight-and-a-half-inch Redbreasted Sapsucker has a white stripe on the wing
The Nuttalls Woodpecker is restricted to California and northern Mexico west of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges. They can be found throughout the park wherever oak trees are found. Although Nuttalls Woodpeckers prefer to forage in oak trees, they do not eat acorns, but prefer fruits, berries, and insects, especially adult and larva beetles. They work their way carefully across trunks and branches searching crevices and under the bark, often hanging upside down as they forage, flaking and probing the bark rather than drilling.
The California Quail, the official state bird, was for a time rather rare in Bidwell Park, primarily due to a large population of feral cats. After the removal of nearly 1,000 cats by the Chico Cat Coalition, the birds are once again common throughout the park in open forest, forest edges, and grassland. The California Quail is a short, rounded bird with a short black beak and stands about nine inches tall; the male has a black throat, gray chest, and a top knot drooping forward. The female is much lighter in color, lacks the black throat and has a smaller topknot. You will frequently see them running across the road, rarely flying and then only for short distances. Their distinctive call sounds to some like Chi-ca-go, Chi-ca-go, and the male and female often alternate singing, one following the other, a phrase at a time.
The Red-Shouldered Hawk should perhaps be called the “Red-Bellied Hawk,” as the Pacific race has undersides of a deep, bright rusty color. The red-shouldered name comes from the eastern US. populations that exhibit this color only on their “shoulders,” which are actually their wrists. These medium-sized hawks prefer mixed deciduous and riparian forests but unlike other soaring hawks do not shy away from populated areas and can be found nesting in lower Bidwell Park as well as in a few well-treed neighborhoods. They are common along roadsides, sitting on power poles. Besides reddish undersides, their black and white barred wings and banded tail make them easy to recognize.
As with most hawks, the female is larger than the male. In a nest 20 to 50 feet above ground both male and female guard the nest and incubate the eggs. After hatching, the female does most of the brooding of the young while the male does most of the hunting for the offspring. The eggs hatch asynchronously, so the oldest and biggest young get the first chance at the delivered food; in lean years the youngest hawks may starve.
Cedar Wax Wings are found in groups feeding on berries throughout the park in the winter. They get their name from the red tips of some of their wing feathers, which appear to have been dipped in sealing wax. (A document that was so sealed was a legitimate document and the seal became the equivalent of a legal signature today.) But the number of red tips varies from zero ten on individual birds. The ends of the tail feathers are yellow, the color coming from the plant material the birds ate. If they happen to have eaten certain red berries while their tail feathers were forming, the tips might be red or orange. Also characteristic are the smooth, silky plumage, the noticeable topknot, and a black mask outlined in white. The food of the wax wing consists primarily of fleshy fruit but they will take insects. They have an efficient digestive system which can separate the fruit from the seed with the seed defecated in about 16 minutes! Gregarious birds, they sometimes pass a berry from bird to bird until one decides to eat it. They are usually seen in flocks of 10 to 50 birds.
The Ruby-Crowned Kinglet is fairly common through the forested areas of the park in the winter and early spring. This grayish green bird occasionally displays its ruby-red crest, the source of its name, meaning “little king.” Although the female does not have a crest, both sexes have a white eye ring and a lower wingbar bolder than the upper. One of the smallest of songbirds, at a bit over four inches, it the Ruby-Crowned Kinglet would be inconspicuous except for its flighty behavior, hopping frantically from branch to branch, wings flapping, seeking insects and spiders, their eggs, and larvae. It often hovers over the tips of branches, swooping down to pick up its prey. It occasionally eats berries, tree sap, and even nectar as well.
Brown Creeper sounds more like a comic book character than a bird, but this inconspicuous little bird belongs to an interesting guild of birds that make their living by pecking and probing in the crevices of tree bark for insects, their larvae and eggs, spiders, and other arthropods too small for most birds. Brown Creepers are uniquely adapted to this foraging style because of their long, thin, and curved bill for probing, long claws for adhering to the tree trunk, and stiffened tail feathers to support their bodies while climbing and probing. They typically fly to the bottom of a tree trunk and climb upwards in a spiral pattern. Although nuthatches creep like creepers, nuthatches have straight bills, short tails, and tend to start at the top of a tree and work their way down. The brown coloration with white streaking, white breast, and rufous (reddish) tail are also distinctive Brown Creeper features and provide them some camouflage. They are small birds, about five inches long and weighing slightly over a quarter ounce, or about the weight of seven or eight paper clips.
The Great Horned Owl, one of the most common and widespread owls in North America, stands two feet tall with a wingspread of up to five feet. Like many raptors, the female is larger than the male. Most active after dusk, they can also be seen in the late afternoon or morning in the more densely wooded areas of the park. Their cryptic coloration varies from shades of brown to gray, the better to blend in with tree bark and branches. Their contrasting orange-yellow eyes, as big as a human’s, are tubular and fixed in the head by a funnel-like series of bones, which is why owls have to bob and turn their head, up to 270 degrees, to focus on an object. They can see in the daytime as well as humans can and perhaps 50 times better at night because they have more night vision sensory cells than we have.
The many species of owls vary in their calls, but the whoo-who-who of the Great Horned Owl is the classic call we all know.
Roger Lederer, Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences at CSU, Chico, has birdwatched in more than 90 countries. In addition to The Birds of Bidwell Park, his books include Amazing Birds, Pacific Coast Bird Finder, and Birds of New England. His website Ornithology.com—an excellent aid for all birders and nature lovers—has been used and acknowledged as a resource by the BBC, National Geographic, National Public Radio, National Canadian Television, and many other organizations and individuals.
Dr. Lederer served as Dean of the College of Natural Sciences for 10 years, and was the University’s first endowed Professor of Environmental Literacy. He also served as a founding member of Up the Road’s Board of Directors.
