Sunday, September 21, 2008

Back in California

I birded today with a friend from the East Coast, Ben. He needed to track down Cal gnatcatcher for his lifelist, so we met at Upper Newport Bay. After three hours of hearing them without a good view, we finally got on one calling nearby and once we had our fill of looking at it, gnatcatchers were everywhere. A blue-grey even popped up and gave us some good looks, typical, once we've seen them, they're everywhere.
(Click me!)

We headed up to the coast to Bolsa Chica, which was a strangely quiet place, in between the shorebirds departure and the fall ducks arrival. The weather was incredible, sunny and breezy, and I even managed to burn my face, ugh. I was surprised to see a large number of belted kingfishers on the far end of Bolsa Chica in the eucalyptus grove. We walked around and back to the parking lot, where we parted ways.
In some ways, I'm very glad to be home, but I sure do miss Cambridge. The scenery, the birding, the ambiance - it truly was a wonderful place and I plan to go back in the future. Now it's time to buckle down and enter my last year at UCI (!) already - wow. 

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