Birding Articles

TMBC is proud to present these articles reprinted from our monthly newsletter, The HOOT, and from The Cub, a local Bear Valley Springs newspaper. Articles are written by TMBC club founder Clark Moore unless otherwise noted.

Click on the links below to open a new window with the article in printable form.

• A Tale of Icy Tail - by Marilyn McCune NEW!
  
  
• Phase - Morph - Color Variations. Take Your Pick?
  
  
• A Dropped Feather
  
  
• Don't Just Call It a "Bunch" of Birds!
  
  
• Mis-Calls
  
  
• Mountain Eagle Down!
  
  
• Postcard from Orcus Island
  
  
• Tricolored Blackbirds
  
  
• Bandtails! Flying Left at Eleven O’Clock! - Band-tailed Pigeons
  
  
• The Ninth Owl
  
  
• The Condor Express – In Search Of The Red-billed Tropicbird - Pelagic Birding, part 2
  
  
• Shearwaters, Petrels, Skuas and the Southern California Bight - Pelagic birding, part 1
  
  
• It’s a Cold Case – With No Evidence In The Morgue - The Tehachapi population of White-headed Woodpeckers
  
  
• The Horaltic Pose (Part 1) and The Horaltic Pose (Part 2) - Observations and research on the spread-winged posture of Turkey Vultures.
  
  
• How Many Hummingbirds? – How to estimate the number of hummers visiting your feeders
  
  
• Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump – Pileated Woodpecker
  
  
• Twitcher Talk – a partial glossary of British birding lexicon.
  
  
• West Nile Virus Update – April 2004
  
  
• Shaggy Thunderbird Memories - Recalling the Turkey Vulture Census
  
  
• Hammerheads, “Tap Tap Tap Tap” - Picids in the Tehachapi Mountains.
  
  
• Physiological Zero - How do eggs remain viable for an extended period before incubation starts?
  
  
• Victims, Vectors, And Viruses - West Nile Virus
  
  
• Who's the thief? - An amazing story about industrious European Starlings. This at first appears to be an urban legend, but our research appears to confirm it's validity.
  
  
• Acorn Woodpecker - The Clown of the Oak Woodland
  
  
• Lawrence's Goldfinch - The Most Wanted Bird
  
  
• California and Mountain Quail - Precocial Gallinaceous Galliformes
  
  
• Galapagos Finches, Hawaiian Honeycreepers and the Red Crossbills of the Tehachapis
  
  
• Zone-tailed Hawk - Disguise and Surprise
  
  
• The Second Hawk - Identifying individuals within a species
  
  
• Dawn Chorus - Morning birdsong
  
  
• Dark-eyed Junco - What Makes a Junco a Junco? Scientific classification of birds
  
  
• Purple Martins in the Tehachapi Range of California
  by Brian Williams, Wildlife and Conservation Ecologist
  
  
• Surveys of Mount Pinos Blue Grouse in Kern County, CA
  by James D. Bland, Santa Monica College