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Western Birds WESTERN BIRDS Vol. 48, No. 3, 2017 Western Specialty: Elegant Quail Rusty Blackbird (Euphagus carolinus) Photo by © David S. Irons of Beaverton, Oregon. Hillsboro, Washington Co., Oregon, 28 November 2013. Male in fresh formative plumage. Photo by © Isaac Sanchez of Austin, Texas: Elegant Quail (Callipepla douglasii) 2 km north of Valle de Banderas, Nayarit, Mexico. This photo of an adult male shows some of the characters distinguishing the subspecies C. d. impedita, restricted to the central and southern portions of the state of Nayarit, Mexico: the crest is pale cinnamon, the throat is evenly streaked with black and white (neither color predominating over the other), Brewer’s Blackbird (Euphagus cyanocephalus) the deep gray breast lacks rufous spots, and the distinct white Photo by © Joseph Morlan of Pacifica, California. spots on the belly are relatively small and widely spaced. In Bodega Head, Sonoma Co., California, 13 November 2011. this issue of Western Birds (pp. 181–196), Diego C. Blanco, In this male in fresh plumage, the pale fringes to the back feathers and Devon A. DeRaad, and James M. Maley explore the complex tertials and the dark mask suggest a Rusty Blackbird, but the bill and tail variation among the five subspecies of the Elegant Quail, a structure, glossiness of the flight feathers, and color of the fringes indicate species endemic to western mainland Mexico. the bird is a Brewer’s Blackbird. Volume 48, Number 3, 2017 New and Extralimital Records of Breeding Birds for Putah Creek, California John A. Trochet, Andrew Engilis, Jr., Melanie L. Truan, Irene E. Engilis, Robert A. Walsh, Edward Whisler, and Kristen E. Dybala ..............................................................154 Tag-Team Takeover: Usurpation of Woodpecker Nests by Western Bluebirds Samuel Cowell, Kim Sullivan, Hannah Domgaard, Sara Lorscheider, Mariah Panoussi, Lindsey Parrish, Taryn Rodman, Teresa Lorenz, and Phil Fischer .......................173 Geographic Variation and Intergradation in the Elegant Quail Diego C. Blanco, Devon A. DeRaad, and James M. Maley ........181 Notes on Eurasian Barn Swallows in Alaska, Including the First Documentation of Successful Breeding in North America Bryce W. Robinson and Lucas H. DeCicco ................................197 Featured Photo: Identification of Male Euphagus Blackbirds in Fresh Fall Plumages Lukas J. Musher, Peter Pyle, David S. Irons, and James R. Tietz ...........................................205 Front cover photo by © Andrew Engilis, Jr., of Davis, California: Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) at Lake Solano County Park, Solano Co., California, 11 November 2010—the female of the first pair of the Pileated Woodpecker confirmed nesting on the floor of California’s Central Valley along Putah Creek. Along with multiple other sightings of individuals and pairs along Putah Creek since 2001, it represents a downslope extension of the species’ range. Back cover: “Featured Photos” by © Lukas J. Musher of New York, New York (upper), and Dan Brown of Sacramento, California (lower): Fresh-plumaged male Brewer’s Blackbirds (Euphagus cyanocephalus) at Southeast Farallon Island, San Francisco Co., California, 5 October 2013 (upper) and in Sonoma County, California, 18 November 2010. Both have the plumage extensively edged brown, leading to possible confusion with the Rusty Blackbird (E. carolinus), especially when seen or photographed in low light. Western Birds solicits papers that are both useful to and understandable by amateur field ornithologists and also contribute significantly to scientific literature. The journal welcomes contributions from both professionals and amateurs. Appropriate topics include distribution, migration, status, identification, geographic variation, conserva- tion, behavior, ecology, population dynamics, habitat requirements, the effects of pollution, and techniques for censusing, sound recording, and photographing birds in the field. Papers of general interest will be considered regardless of their geographic origin, but particularly desired are reports of studies done in or bearing on North America west of the 100th meridian, including Alaska and Hawaii, northwestern Mexico, and the northeastern Pacific Ocean. Send manuscripts to Daniel D. Gibson, P. O. Box 155, Ester, AK 99725; avesalaska@ gmail.com. For matters of style consult the Suggestions to Contributors to Western Birds (at www.westernfieldornithologists.org/docs/journal_guidelines.doc). Volume 48, Number 3, 2017 NEW AND EXTRALIMITAL RECORDS OF BREEDING BIRDS FOR PUTAH CREEK, CALIFORNIA JOHN A. TROCHET, ANDREW ENGILIS, JR., MELANIE L. TRUAN, IRENE E. ENGILIS, Robert A. WALSH, and Edward WHISLER, Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology, Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, University of California, Davis, California 95616; [email protected] KRISTEN E. DYBALA, Point Blue Conservation Science, 3820 Cypress Drive #11, Petaluma, California 94954 ABSTRACT: We report on extralimital and new breeding records from a 16-year study of birds along lower Putah Creek, Central Valley, California, that began in 1997. Surveys for breeding birds have confirmed 74 species nesting on the creek, while nesting of 17 further species remains probable. Among rare or extralimital species, we documented nesting of the Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus), Selasphorus sp., Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), Pacific-slope Flycatcher (Empidonax difficilis), Bell’s Vireo (Vireo bellii), Warbling Vireo (V. gilvus), Chestnut- backed Chickadee (Poecile rufescens), Brown Creeper (Certhia americana), Wrentit (Chamaea fasciata), Orange-crowned Warbler (Oreothlypis celata), Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis), and Western Tanager (Piranga ludoviciana). The records of nesting of the Brown Creeper, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, and Western Tanager are the first confirmed for those species on the Central Valley floor. Nine of these species have experienced recent expansions elsewhere in their California ranges, and Bell’s Vireo has begun to reoccupy a few other sites in the Central Valley, from which it had been extirpated for decades. We also present evidence for probable breeding by the Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus), Western Wood-Pewee (Contopus sordidulus), Cali- fornia Thrasher (Toxostoma redivivum), Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia), and Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens). These breeding records attest to the pioneering nature of birds and to the importance of Putah Creek in the maintenance of riparian species in the Sacramento Valley. The primary interest of most bird inventories is to document the regularly occurring species, as these influential members of local ecosystems play a prominent role in ecogeographical studies. Very often less attention is paid to the scarce, rare, or irregularly occurring species as their role in community ecology seems to be slight or even negligible (Patten and Marantz 1996, 154 Western Birds 48:154–172, 2017; doi 10.21199/WB48.3.1 NEW AND EXTRALIMITAL RECORDS OF BREEDING BIRDS FOR PUTAH CREEK Udvardy and Engilis 2001, Mouillot et al. 2013). But the documentation of rarities is becoming more important in faunal studies, and the trends of rare or extralimital bird occurrences help reveal the nature and extent of the species’ tendency to pioneer, reflect changes in climate, response to habitat management, or even how they contribute to ecological function (Jones and Diamond 1976, Patten and Burger 1998, Cao et al. 1998, Lyons et al. 2005, Trochet and Engilis 2013, Mouillot et al. 2013). In California, Putah Creek flows from southern Lake County southeast to Lake Beryessa, Napa County, then east to the Putah Creek Sinks in the Yolo Bypass between Davis and Sacramento. The lower section from just above Lake Solano down to the sinks, separating Yolo County to the north from Solano County to the south, is a 38-km riparian corridor whose birdlife has been monitored by Truan et al. (2010). Putah Creek is particularly interest- ing because it is one of only a few streams that flows into the Central Valley from the west and is anchored at each end by different habitats, pine–oak woodlands and chaparral of the Coast Range on the west and grassland and marshlands of the Central Valley on the east. Along this habitat shred, species filter both downstream from the foothills and upstream from the wetland basins, and the creek itself serves as a corridor for extralimital wandering (Truan 2004). The section of the creek we address in this paper is entirely below Mon- ticello Dam. Our highest and westernmost survey site, Interdam, is about 6 km below the dam at elevation 52 m above sea level. This is the only site in the foothills of the Coast Range, all others having Central Valley flatlands on both sides of the stream. Survey sites continue downstream to the Putah Creek Sinks in the Yolo Bypass, a distance of 38 km. Below Solano Diver- sion Dam the creek is incised, and in places old levees remain. The high banks confine a channel that varies in width from about 30 to 200 m. The vegetation of the channel, no longer regularly scoured, has changed mark- edly since the completion in 1957 of Monticello Dam. Thirty species of trees occur in the surveyed portion of the creek, 15 of these plus the exotic giant cane or false bamboo (Arundo donax) being significant components of the canopy (Truan et al. 2010). Closed-canopy gallery woodland, mainly of cottonwood (Populus fremontii) and valley oak (Quercus lobata), oc- curs patchily throughout, as do groves of the exotic blue gum (Eucalyptus
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