Two of our winter visitors, on the other hand, try to make up for the rest. The white-crowned and golden-crowned sparrows sing every day they are here, at dawn or at dusk, singly or in duet, from tree and thicket and field. To me this is the sound of the California winter, the clear sweet sparrow songs that seem to be rejoicing that our winter is only a pretend one and spring and summer never really leave.
The third week in October brought a varied thrush, shy, melancholy cousin of the robin, to eat the ripening cotoneaster berries, and a Grace’s warbler which, unwarblerlike, perched for a long time in one place as if it were exhausted. It was considerably off course since it’s a bird mainly of the coniferous mountains of Arizona and New Mexico and the only previous sighting of the species in California dated back to 1881.
A Steller’s jay and a mountain chickadee blew in on a windstorm at the end of the month. We couldn’t have asked for a better study in contrasts, the affable little chickadee, for whom I cooked special pancakes, and the large belligerent jay whom I ended up chasing off the ledge with a broom.
The jay’s name, Big Boy Blue, seemed inevitable — even the “frown” lines on his forehead were sky-blue. He decided soon after his arrival to convert the ledge into a private dining room and he went to work right away, announcing his intention in squawks so fierce that they either frightened or shamed the scrub jays into silence. He would take up his position in the tea tree, well hidden, and wait there quietly until the ledge had attracted a reasonable number of customers. Then he would swoop down with an ear-piercing shriek and fly low the entire length of the ledge, scattering birds in all directions. Ordinarily I don’t interfere in bird bickerings but the situation became serious when some of the smaller birds, fleeing in panic before Big Boy’s wrath, struck the window. Many were knocked unconscious and two were killed, and I was forced to begin chasing Big Boy off the ledge and out of the tea tree every time I saw him. In similar situations involving the bird world I have found one thing to be true: the bird invariably wins because he can concentrate all his attention on the problem and I have other things to do.
The sight of me wielding a broom may have reminded Big Boy of Halloween but it certainly didn’t scare him. He simply waited until the doorbell or the phone called the witch back into the house, then he cleared the ledge as usual. Only once did he get his comeuppance and it wasn’t from me. A flock of about seventy-five band-tailed pigeons were perched in the tops of the eucalyptus trees waiting for the descent signal. It was given at the same moment that Big Boy decided to rid the ledge of his competitors. When the sky suddenly opened up and rained pigeons Big Boy must have thought his time of reckoning had arrived because he took flight like a blue bullet and we didn’t see him for the rest of the afternoon. But the next day he was back at his old tricks.
Bribery may not be the best way to handle a bird but it’s more effective and less time-consuming than wielding a broom. I recalled an occasion when I went to the Museum of Natural History to check a bird and saw one of the Museum’s tame scrub jays hopping around the front desk in a welter of peanut shells. If scrub jays liked peanuts it seemed inevitable that Steller’s jays would, too. The museum jays had their peanuts shelled for them. I decided to remove just enough of the shell to show Big Boy there was a treat for him inside, then let him take over from there. The theory was that if we could keep Big Boy busy with some project of his own at the front of the house he would leave the birds feeding on the ledge at the back of the house unmolested.
Jays, having voracious appetites, are highly adaptable to changes in food. The first day I put out some shelled and some partly shelled peanuts. The loose nuts Big Boy hauled away, two or three at a time — the maximum carrying capacity of his beak turned out to be five whole Virginia peanuts. Though he jabbed at the others he couldn’t dislodge them from their shells. Finally he flew down to the side of the road carrying a shell and began dashing it repeatedly on the concrete, the way scrub jays beat caterpillars on the ground to remove their unpalatable fuzz. Eventually the peanuts rolled out. This method worked only as long as the shells were partly removed. Big Boy tried the same thing with peanuts whose shells were intact and nothing at all happened. The shells didn’t crack open because they were too resilient. Big Boy made a very funny picture beating them on the concrete and then hopefully searching the roadway for loose peanuts.
He caught on pretty quickly, though, and changed his tactics. He would carry the shells to the garage roof, which was made of rough shingles and offered sure footing for him. Various crevices held the shells tightly while he jabbed holes in them big enough to allow him to get at the nutmeats. This gentle drumming punctuated the rest of our winter days. Hearing it we would be reassured that the smaller birds were eating unmolested and that Big Boy was flinging himself into his new hobby.
When he departed in February, I missed his noisy company and looked forward to his return. Like many of the unusual birds of that unusual year, the green-tailed towhee, the mountain chickadee, the Grace’s warbler, Big Boy was a creature of the mountains. Other mountain species were seen elsewhere in Santa Barbara during late fall and early winter, a Clark’s nutcracker on Mission Ridge Road, a Townsend’s Solitaire in Montecito, a flock of mountain bluebirds in a field near Goleta slough. Of the seven species only the mountain chickadees have returned. And this is good news because it means that the drought of 1961, which brought the mountain species down to us, has not been repeated.
There were other uncommon birds arriving that fall who made their visits yearly events. I have previously mentioned the yellow-breasted chat who comes at the end of August and remains until the end of September and who, during all that time, never opens his mouth except to eat bananas and grapes. It’s difficult to believe that this is the same bird whose springtime repertoire is so varied that many people, believe he is a true mimic like the mockingbird. If this were the case, the chats found in southern Alberta would have different sounds from the ones found in our Refugio Canyon because of the different kinds of birds and animals to imitate. I haven’t found this to be true.
On the other hand, the mockingbirds that sing from our television antenna and the top of the neighbor’s sequoia tree are easily distinguishable by ear from those around the house where my bird-watching niece, Jane, lives. Her house, over the hill toward the sea, is in an area of open hills with few large trees. Jane’s mockingbirds imitate, as ours never do, the red-tailed hawks and ash-throated flycatchers and green-backed goldfinches, while the notes that characterize our mockers of the woods are missing, the scold of the titmouse and the acorn woodpecker, the lisp of the bushtit.
On October 6, a white-throated sparrow arrived to spend the winter. Though Easterners are well acquainted with this bird he is rare in California and usually seen only at feeding stations. Two days later a lively little band of pine siskins flew in for a stay of two weeks. The comings and goings of these engaging creatures are usually described as erratic, yet every fall they appear here, darting in and out of the feed boxes and hopping and splashing in the birdbaths. So completely do they make themselves at home that it is hard for me to believe my eyes when I look out one morning and find them gone. Often in the case of migrating birds the main group will move on leaving a straggler or two behind. This never happened with the siskins, who arrived together, ate together, bathed together and left together. I am told that they sometimes carry their communality to the extent of nesting together in one tree, though I have no direct knowledge of this. Like most of our other guests that fall, they perform their most important function in the mountains: Santa Barbara is a nice place to visit but they wouldn’t want to love here.