A question for bird watchers

[zippetydude]

There are some hills behind my house in Yucaipa, elevation from about 3000' to 5000', that I train in most of the time. There's this most curious little bird species out there, and I was wondering if anyone could identify it.

Here's the only clues I have. It's shaped about like a sparrow, but it's larger and is all dark or maybe black. I only see them around dusk, and the reason I've noticed them is they play a strange game of chicken with me. As I'm running or mountain biking down the trail, if it starts to get dark on me, these little birds will land some distance ahead of me, maybe 150' or so, and sit right in the middle of the road until I'm only about 10' away. They only do it at dusk, and they will do it repeatedly, even when we have kind of a close call (I'm a lot faster going downhill on a mountain bike and they sometimes misjudge and almost crash into me when they take off.)

Does anyone know what type of bird this is and why they do such a strange thing? I'm not talking about birds that try to lure you away from their nest by feigning injury. They just sit there til the last second.

z

[Ellen]

Howdy Z

Is it a California Towhee?

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/california_towhee/id

Towhees are real characters.

Speaking of characters...I haven't had a glimpse of the Z flying by me on a trail in quite a while. Apparently, this hard-to-spot and rare species can be identified by its blue shirt, flowing cape and extreme endurance. Rumor has it that its family includes a Kat

Miles of smiles,
Ellen

[Florian]

Maybe a black phoebe .. http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/black_phoebe/id

-Florian

[HikeUp]

Black Phoebe came to my mind too. The ones I have seen are not shy.

[zippetydude]

Hi Ellen, Florian. Thanks for the guesses. It looks a lot like the dusky brown bird in your link Ellen, so that might be it. It doesn't mention the behavior in the write up, so I can't say for sure. If we have a few hikin' fools over some weekend, we'll have to go for a hike right at dusk and you can see them do it first hand. It's really odd.

It usually goes something like this. It's almost dark and I won't even realize one is in the road until I see what looks like a rock sitting right in the middle of the path. I'll think, "Ah hah! That's not a rock! That's one of those kooky birds... Well, I'm getting awfully close, it would have flown away by now. Okay, must be a rock. Whoa! It was a bird. I can't believe it let me get that close!" Quite entertaining, really. We've become fast friends.

I miss the crew out there on Skyline, so I'm hoping to head out in the next week or two. See you soon!

z