Phalaropus tricolor

Strike a pose...

I birded South Tufa State Reserve along Mono Lake this morning, with wonderful results. Birds have really taken a backseat in my attention these last couple months, which happens from time to time; I was happy to find that the break has not diminished my passion in the slightest. The lake was brimming with young birds and their watchful parents, foraging for brine flies along the shore. The California Gulls were many, as ever; the first of hundreds of thousands of migratory Eared Grebes have arrived; and the Osprey chicks have fledged from their nests atop the tufa to seek out their own meals (which must be fished from freshwater lakes in the nearby eastern Sierra) or to steal that of another.

Also migratory and about to explode in great numbers at Mono Lake are these vain hygienic shorebirds here, Wilson's Phalaropes. They are one of two species of phalarope to utilize the lake, the other being the noticeably smaller Red-Necked. Wilson's' name tricolor comes from its flashy breeding plumage, which includes bold streaks of white, black, and coral-red. They are the first phalarope to arrive, some still sporting a bit of summer color, but most have transitioned into their duller gray and white nonbreeding outfit.

As such they were prolific on the water this morning. Some, like these, were preening along the shore like ballerinas running through bar exercises. Others were swimming frantically around and around in circles, a distinctive phalarope behavior employed to stir up larval edibles in the water. Yet most were wheeling around the tufa in massive flocks, engaged in synchronized aerial acrobatics. Having spent many weeks in the mountains, I had forgotten the manner by which shorebirds, especially flocking ones, envelop my heart in a still serenity. The way they play off of each other, shifting simultaneously as if one giant organism, the whole mass changing color from dark to light as every bird changes direction at once--it's a spectacle unlike any other and one I would never want to live without.

A list of the morning's avifauna:

Eared Grebe
Northern Harrier
Osprey
Killdeer
Wilson's Phalarope
California Gull
Sage Thrasher (+ fledgling)
Brewer's Blackbird
Red-Winged Blackbird
Yellow-Headed Blackbird
Brewer's Sparrow
Green-Tailed Towhee (+ fledgling)

....and a baby chipmunk for good measure.