Jack London Cottage a Birder’s Paradise Today!

October 24, 2007 on 8:30 pm | In Daily Local Birder |

Greetings, Birders!

There are days when you set out to bird and the air is strangely silent, the branches are still, the world seems empty of birds. And then there are the days when you stop, en route to a destination perhaps, just to check a favorite spot for a moment and you walk into a blizzard of bird activity, all the better for its spontaneous serendipity. This was such a day for us, as we pulled into Jack London State Park to avoid rush hour. Tiptoeing into the fenced garden behind Jack London’s beautiful Craftsman cottage, we seated ourselves in a birder’s paradise, so alive with species, activity and song we hardly knew which way to look.

Lesser Goldfinches were everywhere but on our shoulders. The last of the Western Tanagers mingled with the first of the Cedar Waxwings in the treetops. Yellow-rumped Warblers have just arrived with a few signal American Robins, speaking of the changing season. Flickers and woodpeckers were everywhere, but over all, a family of fabulous Pileated Woodpeckers gave us some of the closest views we have ever had. 99% of the time, we hear the Pileated Woodpeckers in the distant western forest, their monkey-machine-gun calls and jackhammer drilling announcing their kingship of the State Park, but today, at least 3 of the birds were right beside us, and we got to hear an amazing greeting between two of them as they met in an oak tree at the back of the garden. These unusual calls sounded rather like the sounds of geese, with a cooing quality softening the normal harshness of the Pileated Woodpeckers’ voices. Clearly, this was an intimate family conversation. At a distance, their hammering is incredibly loud. Up close, it sounds like someone knocking a house down! What a thrill to see this lord of the woodpeckers and his royal family ruling over the garden of birds.

Our bird count from less than an hour spent in the cottage garden today is as follows:

Stellar’s Jay
Spotted Towhee
California Towhee
Western Tanager
Downy Woodpecker
Nuttall’s Woodpecker
Acorn Woodpecker
Pileated Woodpecker
Northern Red-Shafted Flicker
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Lesser Goldfinch
Western Bluebird
Common Crow
Cedar Waxwing
Black Phoebe
Golden-crowned Sparrow

In addition to this, there were hummingbirds in the Mexican sage plants, but we remain even worse at identifying hummingbirds than we are at identifying gulls. Probably Allen’s or Rufous. All told, this gives us a total of 17 different bird species in the garden! And it wasn’t merely the number of species but the sheer number of birds that made our afternoon so wondrous for us. What a lovely time!

Any moment in wild bird habitat can give you pleasure like this. We still have enough light here in October to stop someplace on the way home from work, or we can spend whatever other free time we may have in nature, simply enjoying this lucky abundance of birds. The cottage garden in Jack London State Park is a great bet, but you know of other places, too - special places.

As we were walking back to the car, I was musing over the thought that birding resembles strong human emotions. When the moment is over, we have nothing physical to show for it, nothing in our hands, nothing to bring home with us. We only know that we had an experience, nameless, perhaps, and difficult to communicate, but something that meant a great deal while it was happening. In today’s stressful world, the birder fills himself with these moments and can draw from them as from a well of peace. Birding can keep us emotionally balanced, I think. What do you think?