Common Green Darner

Dragonflies are really amazing species, what little I know about them I find fascinating. Here's a couple shots of a very bedraggled looking darner I saw today at SJWS...

Lazy Saturday

Well, I haven't been birding much lately, as you may have noticed by my lack of blog posts, but today I went out to Sea and Sage to poke around. Much to my suprise, I arrived at the tail end of Sea and Sage's Annual Pancake Breakfast. I was able to say hello to Kimball Garret who was there as the speaker, selling signed copies of a new field guide he co-wrote. It was very warm out at the ponds, and there was a decent amount of bird life out there, including American Pipits and White-crowned Sparrows both of whom signal the changing season here, quite a few Common Moorhen, a Coopers Hawk and a Northern Harrier.

The Heralds of Fall

I always know the seasons have begun to turn again when the Yellow-rumped Warblers return to my yard. These birds are winter visitors in Orange County, and like the Ruby-crowned Kinglets, always signal that fall has officially begun. The sub-species we get here is the Audubon race, but when I lived in Santa Cruz last fall, we often saw both the Audubon and Myrtle races, and I learned to tell them apart after a while.

This little guy was foraging with a flock of Bushtits in my backyard.

Adult male-eastern(Myrtle Warbler):

• Black mask
  
• White supercilium and broken eye ring
  
• Small, yellow, crown patch
  
• Blue-gray crown, nape, back and wing coverts with black streaks
  
• White throat
  
• Yellow patch at side of breast
  
• Black patches on upper breast extend as streaks onto flanks
  
• White underparts
  
• White wing bars

Adult male-western(Audubon's Warbler):

• Dark gray head and back
  
• Broken eye ring
  
• Small, yellow, crown patch
  
• Yellow throat
  
• Yellow patch at side of breast
  
• Black patches on upper breast extend as streaks onto flanks
  
• White underparts
  
• White wing patch

*info courtesy of USGS - Patuxent Bird Wildife Research Center.

First Rain

Yesterday it rained substantially for the first time this fall. This morning it was overcast, but everything was clean and fresh. I love the smell of the air after it rains, its just so earthy and damp and rich with life. I was sitting in my room looking out the back door, and snapped a few photos of the birds that were enjoying the water droplets on the leaves.

CHICAGO

I got to make my first trip to the Midwest this weekend, and I loved it. I went to visit my boyfriend Peter in Chicago, Illinois. It was beautiful, and so different from California. It was an awesome trip, despite the fact that we were both pretty sick, and swapped strains of colds, probably creating new super viruses. We stayed a few nights in Wrigleyville at the Old Chicago Inn, near the Belmont stop on the El. It was a great location, and the Inn was perfectly serviceable. We spent our last night in downtown itself, at a beautiful hotel, the Renaissance Hotel right on the river (compliments of Pete's parents).

On campus at Pete's school, North Park University.

We walked around downtown, shopped, ate deep dish pizzas at Giordano's and visited the John Hancock Observatory. We ate at the very classy (read: expensive) Signature Room on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building, and then took a ride in a horse-drawn carriage around the city at night. It was just as romantic as it sounds, haha. We also visited my cousin and a friend of ours from high school at Northwestern University, which I absolutely adored. It looks exactly like a university should. If I could get into their School of Communcations I would die. If I can't, there's always graduate school.. Here's a few of my photos from the trip, I didn't take many unfortunately.

My own version of a very famous photo.

This was the view from our hotel room at the Renaissance.

The Belmont stop on the El, that's Peter on the side =)

Humboldt County Scenery

I birded Humboldt County today and yesterday with Jim Lomax, Frances Oliver, and Daryl Coldren. Daryl's roomate Adam came with us today. It was great fun, I got a lot of county birds for Humboldt and Del Norte county, which my previous list totals had been zero for!

Arctic Tern SJWS

So after hearing that the Common Tern being seen at SJWS was actually an Arctic, and thus a lifer, I decided to go have a look for myself. Unfortunately I was very short on time, but I managed to spot one tern that seemed to fit the bill. That was my only decent photo. If I see anymore decent ones I can upload those too, maybe I'll go back tomorrow and try for a better view, it was a lifer afterall =)

In other news, the Costal Cleanup Day was a huge success, at least here at the Upper Newport Bay. The Cleanup Day is a state-wide event where people are invited to go into harbors, beaches and parks and clean up as much garbage as possible. For those of you who missed it this year, it is an annual event held the third Saturday of September every year. Did any of you other Californian bloggers participate? If so, where? For those of you non-californians, does your state have a clean-up day?

Do Your Part For Conservation... By Going Shopping!

Hey guys, I know most of you are 18+ and can and do carry credit cards. You might want to consider applying for a Nature Conservancy visa. Each time you use it on any purchase .65% of your price goes to conservation of one of four habitats:

1. The Idaho Mountains to protect wild salmon and the waterways
2. The Coral Reefs system for obvious reasons - good one for people who surf
3. Indonesia to protect the rainforests that house orangutans, clouded leopards and the like
4. The Colorado River which is a key source of water for the Southwest, but has suffered from years of overuse, and the money for this one protects the waterway and the endangered fish species within it.

Every little bit helps right? Check it out here...

Osprey Watching

I had a very relaxing day today, I had originally planned on getting up early and going birding at HCP, but when the alarm clock went off I decided that I really needed more sleep. So instead of getting up at the crack of dawn and birding hard, I settled for coffee and CNN and a short walk later in the day. I wasn't disappointed either. Although it was still fairly sunny and warm, the air had a different feel and the lighting was totally different, time to face the fact that fall is indeed here. I didn't see or hear a whole lot, but one special sighting made the walk worthwhile. An osprey was hunting over the SJWS creek, and allowed me one very amazing shot and maybe three full minutes of spactacular views. magnificent! I rounded out the walk with a few photos of other wildlife, including a Marine Blue and a grasshopper of some sort, haven't learned to properly I.D. those yet...

Even though this one isn't perfectly in focus, I liked it

RUFF at SJWS

I had been putting off going to chase the Ruff down at San Elijo Lagoon in San Diego due to homework and general stress and exhaustion. During a break from working on one of my two papers due Monday, I checked the OrCoRBA just to see if anything new was around. There was a Ruff reported from my local patch, SJWS! I grabbed my camera and raced over there, it was 5:30ish, still light enough to go chase it. So another lifer this month, seems to be a good fall for me - despite large amounts of homework and general busy schedule =)

p.s. the bird feeding next to it in a couple of the shots is a Pectoral Sandpiper.

Lizard I.D.

Anybody know what this little guy is? I found it on the screen door of my bedroom today. It was really really small, slender, and orange with some patterning down the sides, and a very long tail. Sorry for the poor quality, for some reason my camera refused to focus - even when I did it manually - on the entire lizard. Maybe it's the screen...

Sunday Birding 9-3-06

I birded the park across Culver from Mason Regional Park this morning. There were a few migrants there, and just a lot of birds in general. I haven't been able to get a total species count for the morning because I forgot my little field notebook, so I didn't keep a running tally, but I'm pretty sure it was high. The highlights species-wise included a calling Least Bell's Vireo, which seemed awfully late, and a Spotted Sandpiper by the cement ponds in Mason Regional Park. I also saw my second coyote of the weekend, and a Blue-eyed Darner =)

Salton Sea 9-1-06

Alex Thomas and I went to the Salton Sea yesterday. I got some great landscape photos that I put on a seperate post. We got to the Whitewater River Delta at about 7am. We heard gunshots all around us, as it was the first day of hunting season, eek! We saw a coyote run through the brush at one point, probably spooked by the sound of gunfire. We saw her life Clark's Grebe... dead -one of the first of many dead things we saw during our day there - but managed to find a live one in the river to count. There were more Western and Clark's Grebes there in the water than I have ever seen in one place in my life. Alex spotted a Red-breasted Merganser in with the flock of Grebes. It was too far off to get a good picture of, but I snapped a few anyway just for docmentation and I.D. purposes.

We then turned our attention towards the sea. We scanned the water line, and immediately recognised the shape we had come to find. A sub-adult Blue-footed Booby sat on a pile of dead branches, posing for us. The booby seemed utterly uninterested in our presence as we slowly moved closer and closer. At that point we were joined by David VanderPluym, Oscar Johnson, and Colin Wilkinson. We all got great photos of the booby, and eventually even lost interest in it, choosing instead to check out the rest of the plentiful birds at that location, like a Large-billed Savannah Sparrow.

Following them we worked our way down the sea toward the south end. The temperature climbed and at the hottest point reached a toasty 114 degrees. We stopped and walked around in the tamerisk at one spot, where we saw a plethora of species, including Ladder-backed Woodpeckers, Wilson's and Yellow Warblers, a Hooded Oriole, a Loggerhead Shrike, Inca Doves, and most exciting of all for me - Lesser Nighthawks flying around in broad daylight! They were too fast to get photos of in flight, but I did manage to get a photo of one perched on a tree trunk. That was probably one the the highlights of the day for me. =)

You can tell you're getting hot and tired when you start making really stupid mistakes, like getting your car stuck in mud at the Salton Sea. Luckily Dave knew what to do, and with his knowledge, the boys combined strength, and a lot of luck, they got my car out of the mud. My heros!

We moved on to Red Hill Marina where we had no luck trying for the Piping Plover. By this point everyone agreed it would be wise to get out of the sun for a while and take a break. We headed into Brawley, and ate some good mexican food, drank cold beverages, and discussed various environmental topics.We started again, birding various tributaries away from the sea itself. We picked up a few more species here, and then parted ways with the boys to head for home.

About an hour after leaving them we got a call from Dave. They had found a Roseate Spoonbill and a Tricolored Heron. Alex and I almost cried. We talked it over, and decided that we just couldn't handle driving all the way there and back. We were already exhausted, and had a few more hours drive ahead of us to get home. We would have had to spend the night somewhere in the sea if we turned back. So we drove home, feeling slighted and tired. All in all however it was an amazing trip. Alex got over 12 life birds, I got at least one, and a good time was had by all!

Here are the rest of the photos from the trip:

(Can anyone ID the butterlies, they seemed like they could be skippers, and that dragonfly?)