San Diego: Sweetwater Part 2

A different day, we went to Sweetwater reservoir. It's mostly open and brushy, with a big old lake in the middle. The lake was packed with Western grebes, all making their characteristic "cree-ee-ik" sound.


In this inlet, we spotted all kinds of goodies. That white speck in the center is a great egret.

Tom got a really good shot of a Northern shoveler through the binoculars. It may look like a lady mallard at first, but then, look at the muppet-sized snout!


The shoveler, shoveling.

It was also a good spot for meadowlarks, and this one demonstrated something interesting that I noticed only when reviewing the photos. When the meadowlark is looking at you, it appears to have a black "V" on its chest.

But when it turns its head, you can see that the pattern of black feathers on its neck is different! It looks like maybe the long chin feathers cover part of the black shape normally. "V" for "very deceptive..."

Then there was this bright colored bug...


On our way back we spotted some distinctive roadkill... poor bobcat! Cause of death: no longer having a face! Some mammals I've only seen via roadkill, and this is one. Let's hope for only live bobcats in the future!

San Diego: Sweetwater part 1

Every time I go to San Diego, I look for roadrunners. There's a spot on ebird that had a few sightings which is only a mile or so from Tom's house, so we decided to check it out. It looks like most of the county: scrubby, shrubby, and rocky. In other words, perfect for road runners.

The trailhead, weirdly, is across from a giant strip mall, near an abandoned trestle bridge:

As a bonus, it runs along a creek, so there are willows, sycamores, and much-needed pools of water for desert living creatures. Plus, it's a posted nesting area for the endangered Least Bell's Vireo, though we'd be unlikely to see one in winter.

Aforementioned sycamores. Such a different creature growing in a streambed than on the Berkeley campus...

And their strange seed balls (which you seldom see in city-growing sycamores!)

Well, we didn't see any roadrunners or vireos. A few elusive sparrows and a very shy woodpecker were the main attraction. But, other items of interest included this strange squash which grows all over the creekside:


A surprise cactus:Some poop that might be from a creature that had been eating from the plentiful carob bushes:

A nice sunset:

Cosumnes River Preserve

Saturday Field Trip: Went out to Cosumnes River Preserve (in the small town of Galt, near Lodi) and got a tour from SOS Cranes. It was a gloomy, cloudy day, about 50 degrees. One of the guides explained that such a day is called a "duck day" among hunters, because low clouds force the ducks to fly low, making it easy to shoot them.


The area mostly consists of organic rice fields, which were referred to as "rice checks." I think it refers to the dirt barriers that check the water from running out, but of course I was imagining the birds standing on a bowl of cereal. Anyway, there are raised roads running in between the flooded areas, which you can drive on, but you have to stay in the car: a car looks like an unthreatening shiny lump to a bird, whereas a walking person looks like a potential murdering devil. Birds are biased that way.

They look like specks, but these dots are actually thousands of white-fronted geese that we scared, despite our shiny-unthreatening-lump disguise:

And here they are overhead in their flying V that's made of flying geese. Check out how dark the sky is! This was at like 2:30, too!

Also along the Cereal Bowl we spotted many red-tailed hawks: (Can you see it? The dark blob in the center right).
Lots of hovering kestrels about, too. I shot this one through someone's spotting scope: look what a difference from my crappy binocular shots:

Great Blue Heron:


We also saw a few tundra swans--a first for me!

After the tour we headed to nearby Staten Island (unlike its NY counterpart, this Staten Island contained a single farmhouse, a slowly rusting barn, and a lot of flooded cornfields.) This is where Sandhill cranes rest at night, surrounded by a safety cushion of shallow, corny water. We hung out a while, waiting for them to arrive at sunset.

We learned that they tend to stay in family groups and pairs, so they're seldom seen alone.

We also learned that a major difference between cranes and herons (since they look quite similar) is that unlike herons, cranes lack a "thumb" claw, so they can't perch or nest in trees. They have to nest on the ground, on protected wetland islands.

Anyway, my crane pictures don't do them justice. Check out flickr for some pro-level juicy crane goodness. They also make a really cool sound.

It was a good day.

Arrowhead Marsh: Quickie

I had to pick up my sister-in-law from the airport and instead of waiting at the "Park and Call," I waited at Arrowhead Marsh--part of the MLK shoreline. I didn't have much time, but I did see a mighty flock of birds sleeping on the pier. See all those little white blobs there?

Binoc-photo reveals: yes, they are birds!

Almost all of them were willets (plain grey back, white tum. They have a really cool black and white wing pattern that you can't see here. Can you believe none of them were flying in their sleep?). But one of these sandpipers is not like the others. Can you find it?


Hint: It's also the only one rocking out with its beak out. Yep, the brown(er) one with the half pink half black, slightly upturned beak is a marbled godwit.

Skunk headedness

White-crowned sparrows are fairly common at the lake, but, seeing as they are tiny, wary, and typically barricaded inside their shrub-forts, I hadn't managed to get a decent photo before. I'm also terrible at IDing sparrows. Streaky, non-streaky, brown bits here and there, how am I supposed to remember whether its butt was chestnut or buff? White-crowned is distinctive though; it's the freebie of sparrows.

Here's the little skunk head:


Another white-crowned sparrow fun fact is that they have dialects: sparrows in different areas sing different songs. The ones along Trestle Glen have a song that sounds very like the opening to Beethoven's 5th. "Bip-Bip-Bip-BUUUUUUH" followed up with "doodley doodley zzzzzee" All of them have a similar pattern of a few clear notes, then a bunch of blathermouth, and then a buzz. (As opposed to house finches which sound like acid jazz...). Cornell has some nice recordings.

How to photograph a goldeneye

Winter ducks are settling in here at the lake. Some of them, like these scaups, will ham it up for the camera if you even LOOK like you might be scattering some breadcrumbs:

(Lady scaup: "Crumbs PLZ!")

(Dude scaup:"A bit full actually, but I'll loiter just in case.")
Canvasbacks will come up if there's enough safety in numbers:

And I got a very nice shot of this ring-necked duck and her blue striped bill:

But a few of the winter ducks are MUCH more skittish, almost impossible to get close to--especially for my little point n' shoot. They can tell if you are looking at them. They can tell if you're not looking at them, but you ARE pointing your camera at them. And they HATE it when you do that. It's like they think James Bond trying to find them and destroy their space satellite or something.

So... you have to stalk them. Out in the park there's not really any "cover" to speak of, so my method today was to try psychology.

1) Find some other ducky that's about as far away as the goldeneye is and use it to set the focus:

Thanks, Mallard.

2) Walk toward the goldeneye, but don't look at it. Look at whatever is farthest away from it:

3) No seriously. Do NOT look at the goldeneye. Walk forward nonchalantly, thinking about how much you don't care about ducks. And hold your camera at hip level (still keeping the focus button depressed...)

4) The goldeneye (here, the lady goldeneye, depicted by the lovely Xenia Onnatop) will swim away from you anyway, using their characteristic "Russian Submarine" posture:

5) At the last second, look at your viewscreen out of the corner of your eye and put the goldeneye in the frame. You might get lucky and get a shot that's at least good enough to show the Golden Eye.

"I AM INVINCIBLE!"

The same method can be used for buffleheads:

(Lady:)
(And dude:)

Winter is Cold

Short walk in the park this morning, in between rainy days. I noticed something interesting about the squirrel that was looking expectantly up at me. Not the greediness--that's normal.

Check out the ears of this squirrel from a photo in May:


And then look at the ears of this squirrel from today:

I think they look much furrier! Fluff: it's nature's ear-warmers.

"NYEH!"

Fall at Mt Diablo

Went out to Castle Rock at Mt. Diablo this past weekend. It's full of crumbling sandstone cliffs and raptor nests (also crumbling).

It's one of those weekends that make you love California so hard! We had a picnic under the oaks:

And from the bench we spotted nuthatches, bluebirds, oak titmice, golden crowned sparrows, acorn woodpeckers, scrub jays...

...even some far-off turkey vultures. Getting better at photos through binoculars...

Pyracantha adds some color. I'll have to come back here to check for waxwings.

Tom found some quite large acorns. Choadcorns.

Turns out there is a reason the trail is called "Shell ridge."

Maybe Rebecca can tell us all more about why these round chunks of sandstone are breaking off in rounded segments.

The Quest for the Holy Tarantula is at an end:

It was interesting to watch different people's reaction to the tarantulas. They ranged from "ew gross" to "woah cool" to "big deal." Knowledge levels also varied from "which end is the front?" to "mind the urticating hairs."