Lake Berryessa Glory Hole Spillway

Recent rain has further increased the lake’s water level and now the glory hole spillway is doing its job of diverting the water into Putah Creek. It looks like a giant bathtub drain.

Here are some videos and photos from Feb. 19th:

 

Here’s a view of the other side of the Monticello Dam , where some of the water is spilling into Putah Creek.

It is super exciting to see all this water, however this will affect our field season this spring. A lot of the boxes are well out of our reach now and we won’t be able to check them:

When it flooded like this in 2006, a lot of the boxes were inaccessible until the end of April or so. I hope our lower hanging boxes don’t get swept away. We’ll start doing site checks next week when March comes and see how things are going. I predict that we won’t be able to check at least half of our boxes as long as the water level stays this high… Although most of our boxes are close to the creek we have some boxes on higher ground, so this spring we will still have some boxes to check, birds to observe, and nestlings to band. After the rain stops, the water levels should start to go down, and hopefully in a few months we would be able to check all the boxes.

Some of the birds seems to be prospecting the boxes hanging right over water right now. Here’s one that hung around close to one of our nextboxes along Picnic Grounds. He’s banded! 🙂

Banded male Western Bluebird

-Evelien

Box survivors

I was worried that all the wintering storms would have destroyed half of our boxes, but I am very glad that most of them are hanging and intact. Overall we lost at least 5 boxes, and have another 6 needing repairs. There were a few sections of some sites we could not check yet because of the water levels, so perhaps there are even more lost or damaged. But the number of lost or damaged boxes is pretty low, so that’s great news.

Russell Ranch had some boxes in bad shape. This one here is missing a door, and a woodpecker or something else made a new hole in the back.

I’m not even sure how this box was still hanging, but this luckily this one will be an easy fix.

-Evelien

Nestbox plant

Last weekend when I was birding along Putah Creek, I found an extra hanging box outside our normal nestbox trail. It was one of our old boxes but it hadn’t been checked in a long time. We took it down today because it needed some repairs, and we’ll redistribute it to a site needing some box replacements.

 

Anyhow, we found a little plant sprouting inside the box! The seed must have come from bird poop, nesting material, or the wind.

-Evelien

Water levels at Putah Creek

The water levels of Putah Creek are pretty high, and they are about to get higher with the upcoming rain. The Lake Berryessa glory hole spillway is almost ready to overflow. When this happens, the creek is going to flood even more.

Lake Berryessa glory hole spillway. Feb. 11, 2017

This week we have a short break from the rain, so we decided to do a quick nestbox inventory to see how many boxes are still hanging, and which ones needs replacement or repairs from the wintering storms.

Most of our nestboxes are still hanging nicely, though some are a bit out of our reach.

Nestbox at Diversion Dam. Feb. 13, 2017

Nestbox at Diversion Dam. Feb. 13, 2017

Dry Creek Confluence – not so dry. Feb. 13, 2017

Mace Blvd. Feb. 14, 2017

Mace Blvd. Feb. 14, 2017

Nestbox at Picnic Grounds. Feb. 14, 2017

Trail submerged at Old Davis Rd/Restoria. Feb. 14, 2017

Old Davis Rd/Restoria. Feb. 14, 2017

I’m not sure how field work will go when the lake overflows. When the creek floods even more, we may have limited access to many of our nestboxes. But it sure is exciting to have all this water! Yolo County hasn’t been this flooded since 2006.

-Evelien

Tree Swallows along the creek

This weekend I had the pleasure of observing so many Tree Swallows along Putah Creek. It’s so nice to have them back. 🙂

-Evelien