What are the 26 new species I’ve found recently in my Thoreauvian Big Year? What spring birds can you see now in Novato? What reasonably common birds did I finally nail down after months of unreasonable elusiveness on their parts? And where are the special hotspots of our area that hide the uncommon, range-restricted, habitat-specialist birds that most casual birdwatchers don’t know about? Let me tell you.
Birds
Big Year #3: Two Month Update
By the end of February, my Big Year bird count had climbed to 142 species. So where have I been spending my local birding time?
Five Ways to Use eBird to See More Birds
If you want to learn about the natural history of a place, there are several traditional sources of knowledge. But if you are particularly interested in birds and live in the present day, you have the fortunate advantage of an amazing resource called eBird.
Hawks II: Wildland Hawks
In part one of our guide to local hawks, I covered the “neighborhood raptors” – the daytime birds of prey you are most likely to see around your yard and typical residential areas. In this post, I’m covering another handful of local hawks: those which are unlikely to venture in amongst the houses and bustling humans, but which you can find in appropriate habitats within our larger Novato neighborhood.
Hawks I: Neighborhood Hawks
Hawks surround us, sometimes hiding in plain sight. In this post, I’ll introduce 4.5 of our most notable neighborhood raptors, all commonly seen throughout Novato and Marin County.
The Birds of Novato
What birds do we have here? The following list contains birds that can be regularly found in Novato. Some are more abundant than others and some can be more easily found in other parts of the county, but this list aims to convey what an interested amateur would be able to see in a given year with a moderate amount of effort and persistence.
Ten Backyard Bird Songs
Birds make many sounds to communicate. Often they will have different sounds to stay in contact, beg for food, or sound an alarm, for example. But most well known is the phenomenon of song: these longer, more complex, sometimes musical series of notes are the center of spring’s soundtrack. Here are ten of our most common backyard singers.
Big Year #2: Three Week Update
Earlier this month, I introduced my undertaking of a “Thoreauvian Big Year,” an attempt to see as many bird species as possible this year within a ~10 mile radius of my home in southern Novato, while transporting myself only by feet and bike rather than big gas-powered machines. Today, I’ll tell you about where I went and what I found en route to the first 115 species, which might give you some ideas about the best winter sites to visit in the Novato area if you want to see some new birds.
Big Year #1: I Commence my Thoreauvian Big Year
This year, I’m aiming to see more or less all the birds that occur in this neck of the woods. More precisely, I’m planning a new twist on the classic birding challenge in which one attempts to see as many species as possible between the first day of January and the last day of December: I call it the Thoreauvian Big Year.