Nesting Birds at Mather, 05-07-22

Around 7:00 AM I headed over to Mather Lake Regional Park for a walk with my friend Roxanne. I was hoping to see some Mute Swan cygnets at the lake. We didn’t see those, but we did see the swans a lot of other stuff.

It was one of those days when there were almost too many things to see at once. For example, we were taking photos of some Canada Goose goslings and in that same area there was a Great Egret. Then a Great Blue Heron that we hadn’t seen flew out from the tules and a pair of Green Herons flew overhead “gronk-ing!” at each other. And at the same time we could see a Belted Kingfisher sitting on the high tension wire above the trail. So much to see!

Among the birds, the goslings seemed to dominate on the ground, There were small groups of little yellow ones, and larger groups of older ones. One creche had 16 goslings; another one had 30 goslings!

A creche of Canada Geese, Branta canadensis, including 31 goslings.

In the trees, there were wrens singing and Western Kingbirds arguing with and chasing one another. We also found the nesting cavities of Tree Swallows and a pair of Downy Woodpeckers.

The most fun bird find, though, was spotting some Barn Swallows flying around. We followed one with our eyes and realized that it gone into the alcove of a building. We walked over to the building and peeked inside, and found that on the backside of one of the light fixtures there was a nest with (we think) five nearly fledged babies in it. Their parents flew back and forth bringing them food from the outside. They also scolded us for being in the building taking photos of their kids.

We noticed that there were other adult birds flitting around the area, and wondered if they were assisting feeding the chicks. According to Cornell: “…Nests often attract the attention of extra adults that associate with a pair for up to an entire breeding season; these extra birds are sometimes tolerated and occasionally lead to polygyny… Extra adults contribute relatively little to feeding young, but they are known to mob predators and assist in nest-building, incubation, and brooding young. Extra adults may be using nest attendance as a breeding strategy either to replace one pair member should something happen to it or to commit sexually selected infanticide, providing an opportunity for males to take over the breeding female. Nests that are attended by helpers often are ones occupied by older females, consistent with the interpretation that male attendants are trying to secure high-quality females as mates…”

Interesting! Old ladies rule!

CLICK HERE for the full album of photos.

Weird insects were found on the oak trees, but we didn’t find any galls. Among the insects were a treehopper and a mirid bug with long, thick antennae. We also found quite a few different spiders.

There were bug galls on the Coyote Brush bushes, but no stem galls that we could see. And we were able to find lots of petiole galls just starting to appear on the leaves of the cottonwood trees. I’d never seen those galls that “young” before.

We were surprised to see a kind of woolly marbles plant on the ground along one of the trails. We usually see those in the damp vernal pool areas, but these plants were on a dry trail. We also found some Crimson Clover that we hadn’t seen there before.

On our way out, we passed by a young man with a largemouth bass in his hands. He had caught it all by himself and was taking it to show his grandfather who was sitting on a different part of the bank. Sweet.

This was hike #25 of my #52HikeChallenge for the year. We were out for almost 5 hours