May 9, 2004
Big Day preparations
Much of today has been spent scouting birding areas around Davis in search of reliable birdy spots for tomorrow's Big Day. I started out around the UCD Arboretum, where I was pleasantly surprised to see 5 Green Herons, including 1 bird on a nest which had been abandoned earlier in the year due to strong winds.
I then biked out to Putah Creek to bird in the vicinity of the picnic area. Many of the birds I'd seen a couple of weeks ago are now paired and holding territories, including House Wren, Wilson's Warbler, Ash-throated Flycatcher and Western Bluebird (I parked my bike in the middle of their territory and the male decided that my handlebars made an excellent perch!). Migration was also evident, with many Western Tanagers, Black-headed Grosbeaks and smaller numbers of Pac-slope Flycatcher, Swainson's Thrush, Warbling Vireo and Bullock's Oriole. A single male Black-chinned Hummingbird was in attendance at a tobacco bush in the picnic ground (note tongue in second picture).
Walking as far west as the road bridge revealed nesting Rough-winged and Cliff Swallows and White-throated Swifts (but no Purple Martins unfortunately).
Other fauna seen along the creek included this smart, blue-flecked Fence Lizard sp.:
I added Widow Skimmer and Emma's Dancer to my dragonfly list:
I also saw this clubtail sp. My field guide unfortunately doesn't give much coverage of clubtails (apparently there are 98 spp in North America), so any advice on the ID of this individual would be much appreciated. I like the way he appears to be smiling in the second photo!
After a brief stop for lunch, I birded my usual haunts of Willowbank Ditch and Slide Hill Park to see how birdy these places were in the afternoon. I completely struck out at Slide Hill (not even a Tanager!), but Willowbank was, as usual, excellent. Highlight was a showy singing male Hermit Warbler (v poor photo below), with a supporting cast of Western Tanager, Swainson's Thrush, Warbling Vireo, Black-headed Grosbeak, Bullock's Oriole and the long-staying Red-breasted Nuthatch. If migration continues at this pace we should be in good shape for tomorrow!
How do you get your pics so small? Mine come out huge on the site. Good luck on your big day!
Posted by: Chet at May 9, 2004 9:15 PMI reduce the size of my pictures before I upload them to the blog. Most modern windows machines come with some sort of free picture editing software (eg Microsoft photo editor/MS Office picture manager). In the toolbar you can usually click on 'Image', select 'Resize', and then choose the dimensions you wish the picture to be (I try to keep mine smaller than 400 pixels in length and width so that the photos take less time to open). If your machine doesn't have this software as standard you can buy photo editing software such as Adobe Photoshop. Hope this helps!
Posted by: rjhall at May 10, 2004 11:48 PM