Category: Birds

We didn’t do a long hike on our second day in Fresno and did not see nearly as many flowers as we did at the San Joaquin River Gorge Special Recreation Area, but we saw more birds.   In fact, we were greeted at the beginning of our walk by this White-crowned Sparrow who seemed too busy eating leaf buds to be disturbed by people out walking.

I also saw my first Tree Swallow of the year.

Shortly afterward, we saw a pair of Ravens, birds we might have confused with crows if there hadn’t been an experienced local birder who confirmed it was a Raven and not the more commonly seen Crow.

A little later we sighted this Great Egret, another bird we seldom see in the Pacific Northwest.

Near the end of the walk, we heard several ground squirrels chattering excitedly and 

we looked up to see a Red-tailed Hawk circling overhead.

It was great to get out for a long walk for two days in a row, particularly when we had just spent two days in the car getting there and were about to spend two more days getting to Phoenix. We celebrated the day by stopping for Smash Burgers, another “lifer” for me.

We dodged rain and managed to get to Bodega Bay on our last day in Santa Rosa.  It seemed a little bit busier than usual because of how much rain they had recently.  Unfortunately, that meant there were fewer birds than usual, or at least fewer than I have been lucky enough to see on recent visits.  

Still, I’m never one to complain about a sunny day at the beach, no matter how few birds I might see. This Willet was the only large bird I saw on the beach, and he insisted on running every time a walker came by.  

We saw far more birds in the wetlands across from the beach than we did on the beach itself, possibly because there were few birders than beach walkers.

There were several Red-Breasted Mergansers, but this immature male was the only one who stuck around long enough to get his picture taken.

There were several Great Egrets, and they were as indifferent to people as Great Blue Herons are.

The last photo of our trip to Santa Rosa was this Snow Egret on the docks by the restaurant where we stopped for lunch.

After sighting the American Avocets on our walk in Broomfield, I started looking for Avocet chicks since I had seen them there on previous visits.  I didn’t find any. Instead, I found this  Killdeer

that seemed particularly aware of us but didn’t give an alert or leave the area. That inspired me to start looking for chicks, but  I didn’t see any for quite a while.  Eventually, I sighted this little guy who stood out in the dark-green foliage.

Apparently he hadn’t mastered the art of camouflage as well as his fellow chicks, which turned out to be quite a bit closer to us than he was.

Most of the chicks were good enough at hiding themselves that my Canon R5 wouldn’t focus on them, so I ended up with a lot of blurry shots of foliage.  Still, I ended up with a couple of good shots like this

and this.

I’ll never know if other chicks were so good at camouflaging that they just disappeared, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if there were.

The highlight of our short visit to Salmon Creek had to be seeing the pair of Wood Ducks that had obviously become too acclimated to people.

A few weeks before in Fresno I was disappointed that I didn’t have a camera because of the rain when we saw two pairs of Wood Ducks in the park.  

It’s been a long time since I’ve photographed a Wood Duck, and I don’t think I’ve ever photographed one as cooperative as this one.

So, I couldn’t resist taking more shots from different angles 

than I usually would.  

I found it difficult to decide which shots to process and post here.  Usually I delete any photos I don’t post, but in this case, I’ll save all the pictures I took of this guy.