Possibly the waxwings of 1961–1962 did not return in the other years. (Why not?) Or, if they returned, they forgot about the waxwing pudding. (I wish I could. I tend to remember it most vividly just as I’m setting out to sea in a small boat.)
Perhaps the real reason is the simplest: waxwings are as unpredictable as people.
9
The Winterlings
Some newcomers to the coast of southern California confess a certain nostalgia for the changes of season they knew back in Pittsburgh or Providence, Peoria or Butte. True, we have summer days in winter, and flowers bloom all year and the reason we find it difficult to grow certain plants is that our climate won’t allow them a time to rest. We have birds all year, too, yet it is the birds who differentiate the reasons most clearly for many of us.
The warbler departing from the New England states at the end of summer leaves a vacuum. In California his place is taken almost immediately. With the coming of autumn we substitute Audubon, myrtle and Townsend warblers for yellow and Wilson and black-throated grey. Summerlings like the black-hooded grosbeaks and western tanagers give way to the winterlings, the ruby-crowned kinglets and purple finches. The hooded and Bullock orioles are replaced by the fox sparrows and the white-crowns and gold-crowns, the turkey vultures by the sharp-shinned hawks. The path of the departing Swainson thrush crosses that of the arriving hermit. On one occasion these two species actually met on our ledge, with no sign of being much interested in each other. Perhaps the traveler was too tired and the embarker too eager to be gone.
The return of birds year after year to the same nesting area has been widely discussed and researched. Not so much has been done on the subject of territorial fidelity to winter quarters, yet almost every Californian with a feeding station is aware how strong this fidelity is among most species. The Audubon warblers and the white-crowned and golden-crowned sparrows come first to mind since they are the most numerous. It is easier, however, to keep records on the less numerous species, the Lincoln sparrow, for instance, which is quite rare in our area.
Every October a pair of Lincoln sparrows appears on the lower terrace and for the next five months they divide their time between the terrace and the ledge, doing their best to dispel the widespread rumors that they are shy and retiring and given to skulking in the underbrush. These birds have not been banded but it seems likely, both from their behavior and the scarcity of the species locally, that they are the same birds year after year. Many of our birdwatching friends have come to the house in order to compare the Lincoln with the song sparrow. The two frequent the same area and can often be seen side by side. At these times the differences show up quite clearly — the Lincoln’s ochre-washed chest, finely streaked with black, is distinctive. Younger song sparrows resemble Lincolns more closely than the older birds do.
Another of our regular winter visitors is unusual not because the species is rare here — we list hundreds of Oregon juncos on every Christmas count — but because these birds are gregarious creatures, always in flocks, and our junco, a female, arrives in October alone, spends the winter alone and leaves again in mid-April, still alone. I frequently see groups of juncos on the adjacent property foraging under the avocado trees, so there are obviously many of them in the neighborhood. Yet, as far as we can tell, only this lone female comes to feed on the ledge.
A ranger-naturalist at Jenny Lake in the Grand Tetons National Park told us of a similar experience he had and showed us the female junco involved, a member of the pink-sided subspecies. She was nesting where she had in previous years, under a small bush right beside the main walk into Jenny Lake Museum. She allowed herself to be lifted off the nest so that we could see her moss-lined bowl of little speckled eggs. As soon as we entered the museum she returned to her eggs, displaying no signs of rancor or nervousness. Since Grand Tetons Park comprises over 300,000 acres it is difficult to understand why she chose a spot where dozens of pairs of feet passed every day. Perhaps she depended on the presence of human beings to discourage enemies of hers that reached much further back in time than man. The ranger said she showed up every June alone, and built her nest and raised her young alone. He and other employees of the park had watched carefully for signs of her mate but no one ever caught sight of him and his existence has to be presumed on the evidence of three lively children.
Our own Oregon junco was responsible for a misunderstanding which probably caused many a raised eyebrow in local circles. It happened one day in November, a time when severe winds often sweep down the canyon, shaking the crowns of the palm trees as if they were feather dusters, and twisting the eucalyptus into frenzied contortionists. We’d been having trouble with our extension phone and had arranged for a repairman to come and look at it. Returning home from downtown I found that the wind had blown open the door of my office. Birdseed was scattered all over the carpeting and in the middle of it, peacefully foraging, was the little female junco. She seemed quite at home, choosing a seed here and a seed there and then flying up to inspect the desk and lamp and bookcase and my writing chair. When I tried to persuade her to go back out the door she merely hopped into the living room. Here she continued her inspection tour of the house, showing signs of uneasiness only when she discovered that the picture window was made of glass and offered her no means of exit.
Birds, like some people, have a tendency to panic when they realize they’re trapped. The junco was more phlegmatic than most but I was afraid this wouldn’t last and I wanted to coax her out of there in a hurry. I opened all openable windows and removed the screens. Her only response to my attempts to help her was to keep fluttering her wings against the same picture window.
At this point the doorbell rang announcing the arrival of the telephone repairman. Since birds are much more sensitive to movement than to noise, I stayed where I was and shouted through the door: “Wait on the porch for a minute. I have a junco in here I’m trying to get rid of.”
“Can I help?”
“No thanks, I’ll manage.”
And I finally did, by slowly drawing the drapes across the picture window. The junco proved she knew the exits perfectly and had been just playing a game with me. Pausing only long enough to send me a that’s-not-fair look she made a beeline for the nearest unscreened window. When I opened the drapes she was already back in her place on the ledge.
I let the repairman into the house. He stared around the room with a rather disappointed expression. “I see you got rid of him okay.”
“Yes. She went out the window.”
“A female yet. Which window?”
I pointed to it and he crossed the room and looked down at the patio below.
“Say, that’s some drop, must be twelve to fifteen feet and solid concrete underneath. How about that, eh? These junkies will try anything.”
He was so keen and excited that I didn’t have the heart to set him straight. It has probably become part of his family legend — how he was present the day the dope addict jumped out of the bird addict’s window.
Under special circumstances records of territorial fidelity to winter quarters can be kept without banding the birds. This applied in some degree to our pair of Lincoln sparrows. It applied even more to a bird well known to people living in the East and Midwest, though there had never been a California record of it.
The bird appeared in a willow tree in the yard of Jewell and Russ Kriger about the middle of October, 1961. The willow leaves were still very dense, and at first Jewell was able to catch only a glimpse of the bird, but it was enough to convince her it belonged to a species new in the area. When she finally saw it clearly, she couldn’t believe her eyes and didn’t expect anyone else to believe them either. She spent more than a week studying the bird before she confessed to me on the phone that she had a Baltimore oriole in the willow tree beyond her balcony.