One of my favorite "burns" is along Century Drive west of Bend, Oregon.
Wildfires are frequent in the semi-arid central and eastern parts of
Oregon. Insects and disease soon move into burnt-over pine forests, and
are succeeded by woodpeckers. If left undisturbed (they rarely are), the
area soon becomes a mecca for all kinds of cavity-nesting birds. This
particular burn is at the edge of the Ponderosa Pine belt on the east
slope of Mt Bachelor. That's where I went last Sunday morning to
photograph birds. While there, I witnessed some strage events. It
almost felt like I was in the Twilight Zone:

A storm front had passed through the night before; and it left behind a
beautiful, cool, sunny morning. The dead trees in the burn were full of
the songs of Warblers (Townsend's, Wilson's, and Audubon's), Solitary
Vireos, Kinglets, Cassin's Finches and others. I was manoevering into
position to get a photo of a particularly cooperative Pygmy Nuthatch,
when it flew off towards a large dead Ponderosa Pine about 150 feet away
and disappeared into a nest cavity. As I watched in my binoculars, I
noticed that a Mountain Bluebird had an active nest in a tree a few feet
away. This was a photo opportunity I couldn't pass up!

I had covered about half the distance when a wind gust came up suddenly.
As I was bracing myself againts it's force, I heard a loud *CRACK*,
sounding like a gunshot. More loud cracks followed, until it became a
roar. I watched the Nuthatch's tree come crashing, almost in slow
motion, to the ground! In all my hours of walking in the woods, I'd
never seen more than a large branch fall out of a tree, let alone a whole
tree. Now the very tree I was watching came crashing down before my
eyes. What's more, the first tree brushed against the second, and the
Bluebird tree went down as well! The wind disappeared almost as soon as
it had begun. Two Pygmy Nuthatches were now climbing on the 8-foot
stump, frantically searching for their lost home, and nearby, a male
Mountain Bluebird was doing the same on the stump of the second tree.

Unfortunately both nest cavities were face down, and I could hear the
peeping of birds within. I looked around for the female Bluebird, but
she was nowhere to be found. I feared the mother bird was entombed alive
in the fallen trunk. I tried using a large log as a lever to pry it up,
but it couldn't be budged.

I was witness to another unusual event a few minutes later. During the
summer, Chipping Sparrows can usually be heard singing throughout the
burn. But this morning, I had heard none. Maybe they weren't in yet? I
finally noticed a small group in some Manzanita. They were soon joined
by a few more, and then a few more. Some of the birds were leaving and
flying off to the west, as new birds came in from the east. I noticed
groups of 5-10 flying in over a small ridge, along a narrow corridor
about 30 feet wide. They were all flying just a few inches off the
ground, stopping and starting every few dozen yards, all of them heading
west.

After several minutes of this, I decided I needed to get an estimate of
their numbers. I had never really seen "flocks" of Chipping Sparrows
before. The largest group I'd ever seen was of about a dozen in a mixed
species flock in Missouri one winter. I looked at my watch and then
started counting. When I got to a hundred, I looked at my watch again.
Two minutes and ten seconds! This continued for a total of almost 40
minutes (not quite at that fast pace the whole time). I'm sure there
were at least a thousand Chipping Sparrows! At one point an unseen
Brewer's Sparrow called from within the mass. A few minutes later I
heard it again in the distance to the West.

Earlier this Spring I saw an enormous flock of Savannah Sparrows in
migration. I'd never seen a large flock of them before. I didn't think
they even flocked -- at least not at this latitude. Now this. What's
going on?

Skip

--
Skip_Russell at intersolv.com
Aloha, Oregon