Song Birds Trip Report

The Song Birds is a distributed team dedicated to recording audio of as many species as possible. Led by Board member Sue Pelmulder and assisted by Ginger Langdon-Lassagne (who processed audio and helped identify birds by call), this team recorded vocalizations for 51 species in the county.

Processing a California Thrasher song in Raven Lite

Processing a California Thrasher song in Raven Lite

Team members and their abbreviations for the list are:

Sue Pelmulder (SP) — Cuesta Park in Mountain View, Shoup Park in Los Altos and Stevens Creek Canyon in Cupertino
Ginger Langdon-Lassagne — Processed audio, assisted in identifying birds
Mary Ann Robertson (MAR) — Birded the suburban peninsula
Julie Amato (JA) — Picchetti Ranch (with MAR)
LC Boros (LCB) — Rural, east hills

Trip report from Mary Ann & Julie at Picchetti Ranch

A beautiful peacock greeted Mary Ann with a very loud call as she got out of her car at the hiking parking lot at Picchetti Ranch Preserve.  She managed to get a few photos of him and later recorded his call on her Recorder app (WildBird) on her iPhone.  Julie arrived and we they set off on the Zinfandel Trail for a morning of recording bird songs.  At the start of the trail, we saw and recorded a Pacific-Slope Flycatcher that was nearby in a tree.  The highlight of the morning was seeing and recording a California Thrasher in a tree next to the Zinfandel Trail.  Unfortunately Mary Ann was not able to get a photo.

A loud tractor with discer at Picchetti Ranch

A loud tractor with discer at Picchetti Ranch

Luckily we did not meet many people on the trail but we did encounter a Deere tractor with a disc plow creating wide firebreaks near the intersection of the Zinfandel and Orchard Loop Trails.  ("Nothing runs like a Deere.")   This noise is in the background of many of our recordings.  

We turned onto the Vista Trail and enjoyed the Oaks and view on Vista Point.  We saw a Flycatcher in the oak grove but it did not call.  We headed for the vernal pond and spotted a chipmunk on a tree branch along the way.  The pond was dry.  An Oak Titmouse was in one of the Valley Oaks and there were many galls on the trees.

We rejoined the Zinfandel Trail and walked south to a little past the first small bridge and then turned around and went back along the trail to the parking lot.  Near the restrooms we saw Wild Turkeys.  Spotted Towhees were frequently heard during the walk, and were our most recorded bird.  Happy surprises that we later discovered in our recordings included Warbling Vireo, Wilson’s Warbler, Orange-crowned Warbler, and Ash-throated Flycatcher.

At home the challenge began, trimming the recordings and identifying birds.  Mary Ann made 23 recordings included four of the "dawn chorus" in her Los Altos yard.  She ended up with 18 usable segments.  She used Cornell Lab's Raven Lite 2.0.1 and was fascinated by the spectrograms of the recordings.  Birds not heard in the field were present on the recordings.  And so the education began.  Ginger patiently reviewed all of our recordings and helped us identify the unknown birds.  We recorded 26 species at Picchetti Ranch!

Acorn Woodpecker

Acorn Woodpecker

Here are the species for which audio was recorded, with each person’s contributions attributed and a few audio tracks sprinked in:

  • Indian Peafowl (domestic type) (MAR, JA)

  • Wild Turkey (LCB)

  • Eurasian Collared-Dove (LCB)

  • Mourning Dove (SP, MAR, LCB)

  • ANHU (all)

  • California Gull [probably] (SP — a single call at Cuesta park!)

  • Great Blue Heron (LCB - huge surprise, about 40 mins in to the dawn chorus!)

  • Red-shouldered Hawk (MAR, SP)

  • Red-tailed Hawk (LCB)

  • Barn Owl (LCB)

  • Great Horned Owl (LCB)

  • Acorn Woodpecker (SP, MAR, JA)

  • Downy Woodpecker (SP)

  • Nuttall’s Woodpecker (MAR, JA)

  • Northern Flicker (LCB)

  • American Kestrel (LCB)

  • Olive-sided Flycatcher (SP)

  • Pacific-Slope Flycatcher (SP, MAR, JA)

  • Black Phoebe (MAR, SP)

  • Ash-throated Flycatcher (MAR, JA, SP)

  • Hutton’s Vireo (MAR)

  • Warbling Vireo (SP, MAR, JA)

  • Stellar’s Jay (all)

  • California Scrub-Jay (all)

  • American Crow (all)

  • Chestnut-Backed Chickadee (SP)

  • Oak Titmouse (all)

  • Barn Swallow (LCB)

  • Cliff Swallow (LCB)

  • Bushtit (MAR, SP)

  • Wrentit (Mar, JA, SP)

  • White-breasted Nuthatch (SP)

  • House Wren (LCB)

  • Bewick’s Wren (all)

  • California Thrasher (JA, MAR, LCB)

  • Northern Mockingbird (all)

  • Western Bluebird (LCB, SP)

  • American Robin (SP, LCB)

  • House Finch (all)

  • Lesser Goldfinch (all)

  • Dark-eyed Junco (all… with a small ? on the brief call on LCB’s dawn chorus?)

  • Song Sparrow (SP, JA)

  • California Towhee (MAR, SP, LCB)

  • Spotted Towhee (MAR, JA, SP)

  • Hooded Oriole (LCB)

  • Bullock’s Oriole (SP)

  • Brown-headed Cowbird (SP)

  • Orange-crowned Warbler (SP, JA)

  • Wilson’s Warbler (JA, MAR, SP)

  • Western Tanager (SP)

  • Black-headed Grosbeak (all)

    Banner sonogram - California Thrasher by Mary Ann Robertson