Arrowhead Marsh, President's Day

Inspired by some equipment I saw at the Flyway Festival, I decided to make my own camera-to-binoculars gasket. One toilet tube and a roll of handlebar tape later...

I had something which was marginally easier to use than just pressing the camera up to the lens.

I went to Arrowhead Marsh to test it out.


First victim: Cross-process turkey vulture eating some roadkill:

Starlings:

This trip got me thinking about the old "habitat specialization" thing. Shorebirds are the classic example of supposedly splitting up resources according to behavior and even body shape. Shovelers have big ol' beaks for filtering plankton:

And a nearby green-winged teal does its thing.

The avocets also seemed to like the "surrounded by grass" water more than the "mudflat" water. You can see from this pic that their heads are turning red for breeding...

Jackrabbit also likes the tall grass.


Also in the grass-water environment, a greater yellowlegs held itself aloof from the duck-avocet-gull party. It's probably working on its novel, feeling deep feelings that others just don't 'get'.


Meanwhile, on the other side of the road, kildeer picked up tiny things from on top of the algae-covered rocks:
Suddenly we saw the kildeer take off, followed by a big flock of avocets, and then the starlings. Who did that?
Me. It was me. Hawk. I'm actually not sure what kind of hawk this is. It's one of those difficult "brown, probably young" IDs.... it was making the red-shouldered hawk sound, keyerr-keyerrr, and I sort of saw that pale half-moon on the wing. It doesn't have the red tail's tum-band, but then, it doesn't have a stripy tail, either. The dark head and non-streaky sides might mean a harrier... Well, chalk another one up to "keep practicin' the raptors."

A bit later though, we DID see a red tail, which we saw lift into the air, burdened down by something heavy and squirming. But then ol' buttertalons dropped it and flew into a tree further away. Turns out the snack was a ground squirrel. An ex-ground squirrel.

What's up, redtail? You put it on your plate, now you have to eat it! What's wrong, you don't like eating near children playing badminton? Yeah, me neither.

But back to the habitat split up thing. Away from the rocks and grass-water zones, there's the tall grass-mud-salt water land, favorite of the willet and marbled godwit. I saw the godwits really shoving their faces down in the mud and they definitely had a few more inches of face than the willet. They were picking up what looked like jellybeans and chomping them down. Tiny clams maybe? Do they eat the shells too? Hmmm...

A lucky spotting this time, a clapper rail! Its distinctive call gave it away right before it scurried across the channel as the tide went out. Right back into the tall grass.

Last time I saw a clapper rail here, it had a radio antenna sticking out of its back. The CA subspecies of this rail is endangered, so they're prime candidates for being tracked for conservation. It's impressive that they are able to survive here, so close to the airport and freeway. Maybe the antenna helped them blend into the long grass too...

On the bridge overlooking the deeper water, there was a surf scoter, or, as I like to think of it, a crazy-eyed clown face duck. Love these things:


Anyway, these photos are obviously still not professional grade or anything, but if you look back at the first photo of the marsh at those tiny white dots, that shows you how far away most of these birds actually were... I think the toilet-tube has done a pretty good job.

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.