"R U Singin' ta ME? A Springtime Hike at Huckleberry Preserve" (March 15, 2006)

Somebody should really tell the birds that they are not supposed to be active at mid-day. It was March 15th, and I was on my traditional birthday hike at Huckleberry Preserve in the East Bay hills. A lightly overcast, pleasantly cool, late morning/early afternoon hike brought me lots of lovely, albeit rather testy, bird sightings.

Right off, from my Huckleberry vantage point, I was pleased to view the Sibley eagle pair, squeaking and soaring and flashing their golden mantles from over Round Top way. I watched the larger of the eagles make lazy, sweeping passes by the com tower, finally landing as lightly as a, ahem, feather. She was perched facing away from me, and I was struck by the massive heft of her feathered legs. It made me glad to be a human and not a ground squirrel.

The parade of avian feistiness started with a jeering flock of Steller's jays. These resident jays, as familiar to me as I am to them, usually just let me pass unmolested, but on this day they played up their roles as "bad boyz" of the forest. And they were hardly the only ones.

A chattering whirlwind of fighting hummers buzzed by, too quickly for an ID. A bit up the trail I was treated to the sight of a gorgeous pair of Rufous hummingbirds, perched within a thicket of strikingly bare, freshly leafing poison oak. The female was subtly orange, and the male splendidly flashy, with his stunning, metallic-apricot gorget. Unlike us melanin-impaired primates, they are SO improved by sunlight.

A scolding scrub jay expressed displeasure in the brush above the upper trail, and the irritated cries of an accipiter cued me to the hawk drama in the canyon: a darting, sharp-shinned hawk attacking a ponderous redtail. C'mon birdies, why can't we all just get along?

To add to these fine examples of a surly spring, an orange-crowned warbler flew by me (in a rather pugnacious manner) and then perched nearby, singing his fool head off. He looked like a greenish-yellow ball of fluff, with just the tips of his primaries sticking out,

sharp-looking beak and beady eyes, all the while erecting his head feathers and flashing me the subtly violent orange of his crown. Was it something I said?

Varied thrush were still hanging around, waiting for winter to end (aren't we all?) and doing their surreptitious, melting-into-the-trees thing. A spotted towhee brightened up a dark spot on the trail, with his sprightly plumage and vigorous scratching through the leaf litter. An amorous Bewick's wren sang lustily, and a flock of band-tailed pigeons cut briskly through the air. Brilliantly colored, red and yellow waxy cap mushrooms poked their heads up through the deep duff along both sides of the trail,

quietly commanding their own share of my rapt attention.

What a splendid display of springtime attitude.

Debbie Viess