ML162148691

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Tags

Habitat

Observation details

We found two clusters of martins, both with two families. In the early afternoon we watched the first and second families, which were about 200 meters west of the southern lobe of the lake, just across the highway. 32 59 01N 116 34 55W. The first family consisted of three juveniles which tended to sit together, and sometimes clambered around in the branches of the dead multi-branched tree where they were sitting. They were good flyers, and sometimes would leave and come back. They were fed by both a male and a female, which sometimes landed near the young ones to rest and preen. We could not tell if other martins landed there, and only saw one adult male or female at a time, leading us to presume we only saw one pair of adults with these 3 young. Adult and juvenile VGSWs also perched on the same tree. The second family was two very young birds with shorter tails and more prominent gapes that stayed on the same branch of a nearby dead tree. The one bird facing us had considerable down left along it's sides. We did not see them fly. They were fed by a male and a female, and again, we do not know if other adults "visited". On the lake itself, we made a concerted effort to count adult (ASY) males, with Roger looking south and me looking north. We are confident that we saw 5 adult males, and possibly a 6th. We did not try to count female-types. We saw one bird that we both thought was likely a SY male, with dark mottling underneath, but we were not positive. One group of birds tended to stay at the south half of the lake, including visits up to the nearby grove where the young birds were perched. The other group tended to stay over the north half of the lake, but there was some movement of birds between the two sections. The second group of families was seen and heard between 1745 and 1845, from Engineers Road as it wound along the northern flank of the canyon west of the dam. They appeared to be making their way from the lake and vicinity back to the west and eventually down the canyon. Most of our observations of them were as they perched and called from dead branches on the northern side of the canyon below the road, at approx. 32 59 43N 116 35 25W. A couple of feeding events took place. Each family consisted of four juveniles, all approximately the same age/appearance, similar to the fully feathered first family, i.e. apparently full-length wings and tail, and a subtly enlarged gape. Rather abruptly around 1845, the birds disappeared, with the ones we were able to track all heading westward and downslope. We were able to visually track the last two birds, one of which was an ASY male, to a steep ravine on the south side of the main canyon, (32 59 31N 116 36 02W) where we finally lost sight of them. Our conjecture is that this ravine, which has several large dead snags, may be the nesting grove, but there is an abundance of snags all up and down the mountain to the south and west from the 2003 fire. So, assuming that the 5 ASY males were accompanied by 5 adult females, there were likely a minimum of 23 birds. (We list 22 total because we can't prove we saw a 5th adult female.)

Technical information

Model

Canon PowerShot SX50 HS

ISO

125

Focal length

215 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/6.5

Shutter speed

1/640 sec

Dimensions

4000 pixels x 3000 pixels

Original file size

2.38 MB