ML573615991
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age and sex
- Adult Male - 1
- Playback
- Playback not used
Observation details
Lifer! Singing male right by the parking lot, found this morning by Denise Wight. When I pulled up it was singing from the pines at about 37.88155, -122.22255. It continued to sing as it made its way around the perimeter of the parking lot and up above the start of the trail. It got as high up as roughly 37.88246,-122.22230, but then came back down into this pine at 37.882164,-122.222444 where I was able to get my photographs. After flying down from there, it was quiet for a while, but then we eventually heard it again southwest of the parking lot where a handful of birders were able to get at least semi-decent looks at it as it skirted around the bottoms of the bushes. He was a brilliant shade of yellow on the entire underside minus the throat connecting to his hood. He had beady black eyes, very dark lores, brown wings without obviously worn primary coverts (so not an immature male), pink legs, dark olive-green back, and a longer, thicker beak than Wilson's Warbler, for example. He sang at least two different songs. The first was very consistent and sung with only a few breaks of from one to maybe seven or eight minutes. That song began with two bounces a minor third apart, starting with the higher note, ramping down to the lower note, then quickly springing back up to the higher one. These two bounces are immediately followed up with the sign-off "TEE-yo" where "TEE" is the highest note in the song, and "yo" is a down-sloping and trailing off kind of sound. All together, this entire song lasts almost exactly one second. This was the only song I heard for 50 minutes and is the first audio file attached to this observation (ML573615991). Then at about 12:35 it switched up its song so much I initially said it was a different bird. This second song type wasn't nearly as consistent as the first. It was like he was experimenting with it. I didn't start recording until he had more or less settled on the song, but you can still hear slight variation in those two recordings. This second song is much more disconnected with what I'll call two phrases. The first phrase is three notes: a pair of very short introductory "pips" followed by a mounded whistle. All three notes have short, but clear separation from each other. The second phrase looks closer than this on the spectrograph but sounds like a quarter second after the first phrase. It has four more connected notes that are somewhat bouncy and sign off a little like the first song, but it's still pretty distinct. If you listen to the songs of this bird on the Merlin App, the first two recordings are very similar to this bird's first song, and the second two are more like his second one. In preparing to find this bird I had listened to them and assumed those differences were regional, but based on this guy, they could have all come from the same bird! Another significant lifer drought has ended! Ever since I saw my spark bird in March of 2019, I've added new life birds to my list every calendar month of the year for 49 months in a row, but that streak ended in April 2023. There were a couple of potential opportunities, but I dipped on both the Red-throated Pipit and the Ruddy Ground Dove. Then early last week I somehow avoided seeing any life birds on a quick trip to Utah, which is the first time I've ever left the state for any reason as a birder without adding a lifer. Just last week the local rare bird chat groups were mentioning how slow this season has seemed, and I was feeling antsy after not getting out for a little while. Then this morning my Needs Alert went off for a reported Neotropic Cormorant! This is a bird I've been expecting, and there were photos! I punched open the checklist and... dang. Just another Double-crested. Too bad. I joked with a friend about the disappointment and moved on. But then almost exactly an hour later, Emilie Strauss put out the alert for this bird on Denise's behalf! She gave useful and pretty thorough details and noted it had been there for much of the morning. I forwarded that to some friends and was off to the races! I mentioned listening to this bird's songs above. I did that while driving over. What I hadn't done was carefully read Emilie's post. I knew it included coordinates and also knew I have service up here, so I just figured I'd get there, then punch in the coordinates and hike up to wherever the bird was seen. Well I pulled into the parking lot, and saw a yellow bird flight out of a tree less than 15' in front of my car. I half-jokingly thought to myself, "maybe that was it," but when I opened my car door, I immediately heard it singing! I could hardly believe it, but started recording and scanning right away. It turns out, if I would have read the message more carefully, I'd have seen that Emilie said (again on Denise's behalf) it was at the main parking lot! Amazing. I actually started laughing to myself in disbelief, but stopped after looking around and realizing Sharon was also there and recording. John arrived next and stayed with us as we followed the bird's song. Soon we were joined by Ethan, but he couldn't stay long. It wasn't until Erica got there that we got the best looks I had of it. Eventually I had to go and get back to work, but thanks and congratulations on the find to Denise, and thanks also to Emilie for getting the word out! I guess the bird didn't stick around very many hours after I left, so time was very much of the essence.
Additional species
Technical information
- Recorder
- Microphone
- Accessories
- Original file size
- 281.63 KB