Sunday, May 19th, 8 am-6 pm
Spend the day exploring the wonder of the Klamath Basin and see what migratory and resident birds are there. Emphasis is on observing spring behaviors such as mating and perhaps nest building.
The caravan will be 4 cars. The day will combine driving, viewing from the “blind” of the car, and also visiting the new visitors center. Bring food and liquids, bino’s, and curiosity.
The leader is Shannon Rio.
KBO is excited to be at not one but two World Migratory Bird Day events this year. We will be at Rogue Valley Bird Day this Saturday, May 11th, 8 am – 12 pm at North Mountain Park in Ashland. The day will be chock-full of activities to participate in, with organizers offering bird walks every 15 to 30 minutes from the nature center pavilion; adult’s and children’s binoculars will be available for loan. Check out an article in the Rogue Valley Times about this weekend’s event or visit the Rogue Valley Bird Day website.
The second World Migratory Bird Day event is on May 18th, from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm at Veterans Park, in Klamath Falls. See you there!
World Migratory Bird Day is a global campaign that educates and promotes conservation efforts for migratory birds and their journeys across borders. It raises awareness about the challenges birds face and encourages conservation actions worldwide. This year, the focus is on the importance of insects for migratory birds. Present in almost all the world’s ecosystems, insects are essential food sources for migratory birds on their long journeys. Migratory birds often time their migrations to align with insect abundance. They depend on these insects for food during migration stops and for breeding success and feeding their young.
The stark reality uncovered over recent years is that insect populations are declining, correlating with a decline in bird species reliant on insects for survival. An analysis in the journal Science revealed that we are losing roughly 9% of the world’s insect population each decade. Deforestation, industrial agriculture, the overuse of pesticides, light pollution, and climate change are major factors driving this trend. (Reuters) Additionally, the United States and Canada have observed avian population declines, with a significant 29% drop in bird populations since 1970, equating to around 2.9 billion fewer birds.
Some examples of actions being encouraged through the campaign include:
Klamath Bird Observatory and The Institute for Bird Populations are excited to announce the release of the first half of The Identification Guide to North American Birds or Pyle Guide in Spanish. Making this hugely informative book more accessible to bird banders throughout North America. The Pyle Guide has been known as the bird banding bible. It sits on every bander’s table with marked pages and a worn spine. Join us for an evening Zoom presentation with the guide author, Peter Pyle, and the guide translator, Rafael Rueda Hernández. They will discuss what is new in version 2.0 and the journey to translate this huge and hugely important guide. The Zoom presentation will be on April 4th at 5:30 pm PST. The book will be available for pre-order starting on April 4th. The presentation is free, and an English/Spanish translator will be available.
On February 23rd, Klamath Siskiyou Oak Network was featured in the Rogue Valley Times. You can view the original article written by Shaun Hall here.
$13-million initiative seeks to restore 3,650 acres of oak habitat to aid ecosystem health, reduce wildfire risk
A $13-million effort to restore health to oak tree habitat in the Lake Creek area east of White City and near the Table Rocks north of Medford is in its second year.
So far, the thinning of conifers that were competing with oaks has taken place on about 200 acres near Lake Creek and on 100 acres near the Table Rocks. The community of Lake Creek is located about 12 miles east of White City, near the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.
The work, known as the Upper Rogue Oak Initiative, is due to take place on 3,650 acres — nearly 6 square miles — of private and public land, all but 250 acres of it near Lake Creek. Partners include state and federal agencies, along with conservation organizations, functioning under an umbrella group known as the Klamath Siskiyou Oak Initiative.
The project is slated to take six years to complete.
An estimated 25% of historic oak habitat remains in the Pacific Northwest, according to Jaime Stephens, conservation director for the Ashland-based Klamath Bird Observatory, one of the project partners. The work is intended to restore degraded oak habitat, lessen wildfire danger and support wildlife, including birds whose populations are declining.
The work tasks include brush reduction and low-intensity ground fires, along with the reintroduction of native grasses and plants, in an effort to leave behind a landscape more resilient to fire, insects, disease and climate change.
“We’re looking to create a forest that would burn at low severity,” Stephens said Wednesday, after one of the project partners, the Lomakatsi Restoration Project of Ashland, posted updates about the work. Stephens said the project will benefit “wildlife and people.”
About half of the forest-dependent birds in the West are in decline, according to a news release from the observatory.
“This sobering statistic has sounded the alarm that landscape-level conservation actions are needed now more than ever,” according to the news release. “Restoration will remove conifers that are crowding oaks, use prescribed fire where feasible, reduce noxious weeds and reestablish a native understory.”
Indigenous people once used fire that benefited oaks, but the removal of those peoples, followed by encroaching farms, ranches and development and the advent of wildland fire suppression has led to conifers and non-native plants taking over some oak areas.
“Historically, regular burning as part of indigenous stewardship maintained cultural landscapes of oak conifer forests, woodlands and savanna in a more open state, enriching natural resources and biodiversity, and enhancing the structure and quality of critical food and fiber resources,” according to the observatory. “Following European settlement, many oak habitats were converted for agriculture or urban development. Decades of fire suppression during the latter half of the 1900s have allowed less fire-resistant yet faster-growing tree species, such as Douglas-fir, to encroach upon and displace oak trees.”
According to the organization, oak ecosystems support more than 300 vertebrate species.
Lomakatsi, an Ashland-based forest and watershed restoration organization, recently highlighted some of that work in a social media post.
“Restoration treatments will decrease the density of conifers and shrubs that have advanced from years of fire exclusion,” according to the organization. “Partners will also seed native species into treated areas, focused in the blackened footprints of burn piles to support the fresh growth of native plants and reduce the likelihood that non-native plants might establish and spread.”
The restoration work is expected to protect the oaks from unnaturally severe wildfires. Planned treatments include ecological thinning to reduce conifer encroachment and the density of surface and ladder fuels around large, legacy oak trees. That work sets the stage for the reintroduction of carefully applied low-intensity fire and controlled pile burns. Oak restoration also includes the removal of noxious weeds and seeding the understory to establish healthy populations of native forbs and grasses that provide habitat.
Funding for the work includes $7 million awarded two years ago from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board using Oregon Lottery revenue. It also includes $2.78 million from a U.S. Department of Agriculture program known as the America the Beautiful Challenge, plus $3 million in matching funds and donations.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is one of the partners. Oak habitat benefits birds, deer and elk, according to an agency statement.
“Oak habitat loss is a major threat to wildlife species in Oregon including Oak Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Black-throated Gray Warbler and game animals such as deer and elk,” the agency said in a November 2022 news release announcing the America the Beautiful funding.
Written by Dr. Sarah Rockwell
The unique Oregon subspecies of Vesper Sparrow, roughly estimated at just 2,000 birds, is of conservation concern. It is currently under review for listing under the Endangered Species Act because of its small population size and declining trend. One of the biggest challenges in identifying ways to help migratory species is the fact that we don’t know where they are for most of the year. Vesper Sparrows breeding in Oregon are only here for about half the year, from mid-April to early October. Because different subspecies of Vesper Sparrow mix on the wintering grounds in California and are not visually distinguishable, until now, we only had a rough idea of where Oregon Vesper Sparrows spend the non-breeding months. This study will help answer questions essential for future conservation efforts – where are these birds going during migration and winter, and what challenges might they face there?
To address this critical knowledge gap, we expanded KBO’s ongoing Oregon Vesper Sparrow research to include using miniaturized archival GPS tags to track the migration of sparrows breeding in the Rogue Basin. In 2020, we captured 10 males via target-netting at our Lily Glen study site, color-banded them, and deployed GPS tags using a leg-loop harness attachment (for more details and photos of this process, see here ). In 2021, we located and recaptured four of these birds to retrieve tags and stored data. Three of the tags successfully recorded these individuals’ fall migration and/or wintering locations; one also contained the spring migration track!
Non-breeding season movements have never been tracked in this subspecies before, and results from these first three birds are incredibly interesting in their variation. You may have already followed the adventures of Po, Gram, and Affy in our recent series of Facebook posts, where we learned where they traveled during migration, but we will recap the highlights here and below in a video. One male (Po; in green) departed Lily Glen on Sept 19 on what appears to be a “false start” migration attempt – he spent one night about 25 km southwest of Tule Lake and then headed right back to Lily Glen – a behavior that we hadn’t recorded before, and in fact, would have been nearly impossible to observe without the GPS tag data. He left Lily Glen again on Sept 24 and sped down to his wintering grounds in just two days. This was also the only individual for whom we also captured spring migration – Po left his overwintering area on the evening of Apr 9, made two short stopovers just east of Vina, CA, and Redding, CA, and was back setting up his territory at Lily Glen by Apr 15.
Another male (Gram, in blue) left Lily Glen on Sept 19 and spent two weeks on an extended fall stopover outside of Chico, CA, before arriving at his wintering grounds in October. A third male (Affy; in pink) chose a more westerly route and had multiple short fall stopovers, including at Sutter Butte, an interesting geological formation made of eroded volcanic lava domes outside of Yuba City that provides a habitat island in the highly developed Central Valley. Unfortunately, Affy’s GPS tag stopped functioning mid-October, so we do not know his final wintering location. The two birds we have wintering locations for (Po and Gram) spent the winter near Raymond, CA, and El Rancho, CA, in what appears to be oak savannah habitat in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada.
This study is the first to identify precise migratory stopover sites and overwintering areas used by this imperiled subspecies, and it addresses a critical information gap for future conservation efforts. So far, it seems like the Oregon Vesper Sparrows are using grassland and oak savannah habitat in the foothills east and west of the Central Valley as a stopover and overwintering habitat and avoiding the heavily agricultural Central Valley. We retrieved additional GPS tags in 2023, and after analyzing the data, we will use this information to assess whether conservation actions are warranted at non-breeding sites.
The Bureau of Land Management, Carpenter Foundation, Oregon Conservation and Recreation Fund, and Oregon Wildlife Foundation supported this GPS-tracking work.
Video: https://youtu.be/wKNi96ffKAY
Cover photo: Oregon Vesper Sparrow (c) Frank Lospalluto
Join us at the KBO office on March 15th from 5:30 pm – 7 pm, to hear three talks by the KBO staff. This will be a hybrid event, and the in-person portion will be at the KBO office at 2425 Siskiyou Blvd, Ashland, OR. This is a free event with light refreshments provided.
GPS-tracking Western Purple Martins to Brazil and back
Dr. Sarah Rockwell will share photos and maps from KBO’s work to GPS-tag and track Western Purple Martins throughout their annual cycle. This research is uncovering migratory stopover and overwintering sites from Oregon to Brazil that will aid in international conservation efforts for this at-risk subspecies. Sarah’s work was recently shared in the Oregonian, you can read the article here.
Dr. Ryan Terrill will discuss this year’s bird banding efforts at six sites throughout southern Oregon. Bird banders from four countries worked with KBO to research populations of local birds at six long-term field sites, all while collecting top-tier data, training other researchers, getting their banders certifications, and conducting public outreach.
Monitoring Bird Communities Through Point Count Surveys
Tom McLaren will give an overview of how Klamath Bird Observatory uses point-count surveys to monitor bird communities’ response to forest health treatments, habitat restoration, and management action. We will highlight how long-term monitoring has provided valuable information about songbird populations. Point count methods provide a cost-effective way to gather conservation-relevant information, which can be used in many ways.
Join Shannon Rio at the Ashland Klamath Bird Observatory office for a series of 3 noon classes (Thursday, Feb 22 and 29th, March 7) and an outing on March 10th.
Topics will include raptors, places to bird, use of guide books and phone apps, and learning about behaviors of our local birds. Winter is a perfect opportunity to learn. A PowerPoint presentation of photos will accompany the talks. No knowledge of birding is necessary. Bring your lunch and your curiosity.
Shannon Rio is president of the board of the Klamath Bird Observatory. As a wildlife educator, she teaches in a style that is informal and welcoming to all knowledge levels. The focus is on having fun and connecting with the natural world.
This is a free event.