Today was the last day of birding in 2006. I spent the day with Caity, a young birder from South Dakota, who was in town visiting family for the holiday. We started at the crack of dawn at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary, which was quiet, foggy and cold! (in the 30's cold for Newport, but from her point of view, not so chilly)
We then birded Upper Newport Bay, where we got great views of a female Belted Kingfisher, a Light-footed Clapper Rail walking in plain view, and generally had a lot more bird activity with the sun shining. We ran into Steve Alter, who helped us to hear some Virgina Rails and Sora calling. I tried the clapping technique to get them to call and it worked pretty well.
We got her life Cal Gnatcatcher and birded around the boardwalk, then headed back to SJWS to end our morning of birding. All in all a good, if fairly quiet, day of birding - farewell 2006!
This guy is a partially leucistic American Coot, nifty huh?
1 comment:
I love that kingfisher photo!
Post a Comment