Vol. 33 No. 1 (2002)

The California Bird Records Committee reached decisions on 204 records involving 88 species in 1999, endorsing 150 of them. New to California was the Shy Albatross (Thalassarche cauta), extensively photographed and seen a nautical mile west of Point Arena, Mendocino County. Also added to the state list was the Red-crowned Parrot (Amazona viridigenalis), now established in southern California cities and constituting the ninth non-native species on the state list.

Using mist netting and area-search censuses, we monitored fall landbird migration in remnant riparian habitat along the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Cosumnes rivers from 1995 to 1999. We detected 125 species, 73 of which we captured in mist nets. Six species of passerines were captured in mist nets but not detected on area searches; 22 passerines were detected on area searches but not captured in mist nets.

In the upper Butte basin (Butte, Colusa, Glenn, and Sutter counties) of California's Sacramento Valley, wintering Greater Sandhill Cranes select unaltered harvested rice stubble most consistently for foraging. They feed in burned and flooded rice stubble for brief periods; their use of such fields decreases dramatically by January and remains low thereafter.

When most people think of Nevada, they imagine either glittering casinos or vast tracts of dry landscape covered with sagebrush. Some western birders might have visions of small, damp patches of green in the gray-and-brown desert, with lost songbirds appearing and disappearing in those migrant traps.

Containing most of what you might wish to find, this 8½ × 11-inch volume could stand as the paradigm for county bird books. The author moved to Yakima County in 1978 and brought a professional attitude to bear in tracking down its birdlife. Since then, he has systematically sought birds in all corners of the county, greatly expanding what was already a substantial knowledge base for a single county. The region treated extends from high elevations at Mount Adams and the Cascade Crest down to the valleys of the Yakima and Columbia rivers, thus encompassing a great variety of habitats and, accordingly, birdlife. The species list for the county is not far behind those of King and Whatcom counties, both with county books published and both with coastlines.

The widespread Cliff Swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) attaches its retort-shaped mud nests to cliffs, cave entrances, and a variety of artificial substrates, but the use of tree trunks and limbs for nest attachment has rarely been reported (Brown and Brown 1995). Nevertheless, Cliff Swallow colonies on yellow pines (Pinus ponderosa and/or P. jeffreyi) were long ago documented in the Big Bear Lake area of the San Bernardino Mountains, California, by Grinnell (1908; photographs), Willett (1912), and Dawson (1923; photographs). These authors did not specify the exact location(s) of the tree colonies within the Big Bear Valley; Dawson (1923) attributed the use of tree substrates to the lack of other suitable substrates in an “otherwise delectable country.”