My wife and I took a leisurely road trip recently through the central valleys of California. It was great. We were on our way to Oregon and in a bit of a hurry. But we had something important to do.
Birding of course. I was looking for a species considered “much prized” by birders.
And me.
Beautiful? Exotic? Rare? No. Not really.
It was this.
[Maybe a little beautiful]
I’ve been trying to see one of these for years. At least a dozen trips up Interstate 5 and the 101 were spent craning my neck. Always on the lookout. For this bird.
This trip I decided I’d had about enough of that. So I designed an itinerary to find one. We spent several days driving the back roads in the central valleys of California. Right through the heart of their territory. It was beautiful in a California sort of way. Vineyards. Golden grass.
We spent several nights in small towns close to where the birds had been sighted. Like the little La Quinta in Paso Robles. They offered a very nice cheese and wine tasting at 5:00. But we weren’t there for that.
Early next morning we started toward King City then headed east on Lonoak road. Good name. No traffic. No houses. Only a couple of farms. The rest was wide open ranchland. Grassy valleys. Oaks on the hillsides.
Perfect habitat.
After an hour or two we spotted some way up a hillside. Too far for good photos. But not too far to tell what they were.
But they took off and swooped down the hill and away from us. I thought we’d lost them. But my wife saw where they went. (Thanks Hon.)
So in summary: we spent five days. Hundreds of miles. And several hundred on hotels. All for several hundred photos and a blog post.
Crazy? Of course it was. But that’s beside the point. It made our trip.
So what makes this bird so special?
Well…it has a yellow bill and lives in the central valleys of California. Nowhere else. In the world! There are similar kinds all over the world. But not with yellow bills that live only in California.
Before you say anything. This stuff matters to us birders.
So what bird is it? [If you don’t want to guess hover over the photos or check the bottom of the page.]
Wikipedia says it “is a large bird in the crow family that is restricted to the U.S. state of California. Common nicknames include "yellow-billed cutie-pie", "yellow-billed sweetie-pie", and "yellow-billed tasty-pie".
Really?
Cutie-pie? Tasty-pie? Hold on here. We are talking about “a large bird in the crow family” aren’t we? That eats carrion and refuse?
Now I always try to find original sources for the info I put in my blog. I couldn’t find any for this. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist. But it sounds ridiculous. So I have to wonder.
It didn’t seem to bother anyone else though. I found it copied—exactly--on nearly every other site I visited about this bird.
Now I don’t know how Wikipedia feels about that.
But it does give me an idea. Next time I have a couple of cool facts about a bird? I think I’ll sneak in one that’s ridiculous. Then give it a few days.
That way next time I’m on line I can see how many bloggers are reading my stuff. : )
Boring fact: It’s well documented that this species displays funeral like behavior when one of them dies. They hop and walk around the dead bird squawking. Then after 10 or 15 minutes they become silent. Some of them preen the dead bird and even offer tufts of grass. Then they leave quietly one by one. **
**Sources:
Dr. Marc Bekoff, University of Colorado, Psychology Today;
Dr. Nicolas Verbeek ,The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Species Account 1972a***
***Actually the Nicolas Verbeek paper cost $5 so I just lifted the information from someplace else. ;)
(All right. The one at this link is sort of cute.) https://www.zazzle.com/yellow_billed_magpie_tea_cup-183711232786379163
Note: links below are sort of random sites suggested by my host.
Yellow-billed Magpie
