Yellow-billed Magpies, Davis, CA

With fall quarter beginning, students are not the only things flocking to campus. Many songbirds are migrating through from northern breeding grounds, or returning to the lowlands after spending the summer in higher elevations up in the mountains.

This gives me a good excuse to mention the UC Davis Birders group, an informal group of students and staff who enjoy watching local birds. We periodically tour part of the Arboretum over our lunch hour and see how many species of birds we can find. This is a fun time of year to be out, since almost every outing we will see some new migrant species on it’s way south, or get to welcome another winter resident back to the Central Valley.

All skill levels welcome- we’ve had people with very little experience join us and over time become more skilled at bird ID.

If you are interested in learning more, or getting added to our email list, just send me an email. You can also visit the group’s new page on Facebook.