A Brit abroad

Two ticks!

This morning the usual early morning rounds at Willowbank Ditch turned up a fine MacGillivray's Warbler - Yolo tick no. 215 and the 150th addition to my bike list! A Lazuli Bunting there was also my first of the fall. The luck continued later in the day when I joined Joan Humphrey and Maureen Geiger at the City of Davis Wetlands. We turned up at Tract 4 hoping to relocate yesterday's Semipalmated Sandpiper, but failed to locate any shorebirds as it had completely dried up! However, on Tract 6 we spotted a solitary sandpiper which turned out to be a Solitary Sandpiper (Yolo tick no. 216)!

This bird was soon joined by Least and Western Sandpipers, allowing a nice size comparison.

There appears to have been a turnaround of birds at this site since my last visit - we recorded 100+ Red-necked Phalaropes and relatively few Wilson's. Stormwater pond held my first of fall Lesser Yellowlegs and a Marbled Godwit. A moulting adult Forster's Tern and at least a dozen Caspian Terns accompanied the loafing gull flock. My first two tick day in Yolo in quite a while!

Posted by rjhall at August 17, 2004 6:22 AM