Ernie Cowan's Outdoors column
My heart soared as the neon-yellow and jet black male hooded oriole fluttered into the nectar feeder dangling not more than 3 feet away just outside the window.
San Diego County is a birding paradise, considered to have the highest population of bird species in the nation, numbering around 520.First is our unique habitat. We have it all, ranging from ocean, bays and marshes to inland lakes, chaparral forests, oak woodlands, broad grasslands, forested mountains and arid deserts.
Seeking some insight into these mysteries, I reached out to Andrew Farnsworth at New York’s Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It was his fascination of migrations that led him into a career as an avian scientist.“There are several related schools of thought on what drives migration, but at some ultimate level, migration is a response to the changing patterns of the resources they need, like food or breeding habitat that follow the seasonal movement of the sun’s energy,” Farnsworth said.
An example is the jet-black silky flycatcher known as a phainopepla. Typically, this is a desert resident, easy to spot in mesquite thickets with its prominent topknot. In warmer months, however, it can be found in coastal areas and inland oak woodlands, likely escaping the withering desert heat.Bushtits are are resident birds but during most of the year gather only in pairs for nesting and breeding.
Their spring journey begins near the southern tip of South America where they winter, and some will travel to arctic slopes of Alaska for the summer. Navigation on these long migrations is both personally fascinating and scientifically challenging for Farnsworth.
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