Buffet in Gravel

Today, Thanksgiving, is a traditional time to enjoy a good meal. For me this year it's also been an occasion to ponder the variety of birds at Halibut Point that search for sustenance in the gravel.

Swamp Sparrow with cedar berry

Sometimes it's fairly obvious that the bird has found something edible that fell from a tree, like this Swamp Sparrow foraging at the base of a cedar.*

Pine Siskin

In other cases a photograph helps to reveal the bird's interest. The tiny fruit of Staghorn Sumacs occupies the attention of this Pine Siskin. **

Chipping Sparrow

Often times the bird is not harvesting something that grew directly on that spot, but seeds blown from adjacent areas that handily are trapped in the coarse gravel and remain more visible than if they had fallen into vegetative duff.

Savannah Sparrow

Scratching and searching these apparently lifeless places can be worth the risk of exposure to danger.

Fox Sparrow

Often times the foraging birds stay within the protection of a shadow.

Hermit Thrush

Many of them depend on camouflage to minimize their visibility.

Blue Jay

Somehow Blue Jays don't seem to worry about being seen, or heard. This one may be swallowing gravel to aid digestion in its crop. Or it may have found a morsel for its omnivorous diet.

Dark-eyed Junco pair

The gravelly margins of paths and roads in the Park make scrabbley habitat for pioneering weeds and the birds that feed on them.

Snow Buntings

Even the ones that come in flocks have to respect each other's resource boundaries.

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*  Our local cedar trees get their popular name from their fragrant, durable, colorful heartwood. Botanically speaking they are junipers, Juniperus virginiana. Their fruits that appear to be berries are actually fleshy cones containing seeds.

Cedar Waxwing with cedar berry

**  Flower panicles of the native Staghorn Sumac produce crimson fruit in clusters at the top of  the shrubs, where they are eaten by many birds in late summer and fall. The small fruit are drupes with stony pits surrounded by sugary flesh, like cherries, plums and peaches.

Robin with sumac berry