January Visitor!

I went birding today with my friend Daryl who is visiting Orange County from Humboldt where he is currently attending Humboldt State. We started at Estancia Park, where we chased and saw a gorgeous Pine Warbler which was a state bird for Daryl and a year and county bird for me. A Red-naped Sapsucker was a treat as well. We ran into Tom Worster, who I originally met a few years back at the Pine Warbler at El Dorado Park in LA county.

Click on the photos to see closer views of these images

We then birded at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary, where we saw the American Bittern that has been seen for a few days now, and got gorgeous looks at it in broad daylight due to the high water levels in the pond making the bullrush into floating reed beds.

Red-naped sapsucker

American Bittern

Besides that, there were bufflehead, shovelers, green-wing, blue-wing, and cinnamon teal, as well as white-tailed kites, red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks, and whimbrel mixed in with the black-necked stilts. One poor stilt's feathers looked utterly bedraggled, and on closer inspection, we could tell it had come out for the worse from an encounter with some oil. It kept flapping and preening to no avail, trying to straighten up. I sure hope it's able to pull through...

Anna's Hummingbird

(click these to get closer looks)

It was otherwise pretty quiet, and after walking through the back area for a while, we decided to call it a day from there.

Whimbrels bathing (click to see closer)

Northern Shovelers