Re: [SBB] American Dipper in Stevens Creek

[[[email protected]]]

In a message dated 3/9/05 12:05:06 AM Pacific Standard Time, [[email protected]] 
writes:

> Stevens Creek seems to 
> maintain a reasonable flow year-round, undoubtedly being augmented by 
> outflow from springs. Doesn't Twin Creeks, upstream from Almaden Res., 
> flow year-round? And Penitencia Creek in Alum Rock Park is perhaps a 
> bit more intermittent.
> 

Indeed, essentially all the streams in the Santa Cruz Mountains that support 
dippers flow year round, but summer and fall flows are much reduced and 
(speaking generally) in many places are too scant to provide dipper foraging 
habitat. Over here on the coastal slope, among several larger streams that support 
multiple pairs of dippers, there is no evident pattern of down drainage movement 
that I am aware of (the habitat in most downstream areas is poor for dippers 
at any season), and one is usually hard pressed to find the species at all by 
late summer. From extensive field work at Soquel Creek, for example, where 
some 20-25 dippers (ad. and juv.) occur at the conclusion of nesting (early in 
summer), I have usually had a hard time finding even one by late August or 
September. The same pattern is evident at a number of other streams, so I have come 
to conclude they are leaving the area. In Don Roberson's "Monterey Birds" he 
cites some seasonal movements to areas away from breeding occupancy in the 
Santa Lucia Mountains, and occurrences of (local?) migrants in San Benito Co., 
where the species is only a rare winter visitor. 

But getting back to the Santa Clara Co. streams, do they have a consistent 
pattern of dipper presence in late summer and fall?

David Suddjian
Capitola, CA
[[email protected]]
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