A Brit abroad

Hallowe'en approacheth...

Tonight I experienced my first lunar eclipse, during which the moon resembled a giant pumpkin - not quite as spectacular as a solar eclipse, but still pretty amazing.

This many-eyed arachnid sp showed up in my office - anyone brave enough to ID it?

Back at home, my new housemates are busy making their Hallowe'en costumes - for a moment I thought I'd walked onto the set of an Austin Powers movie!

Birding inactivity

A combination of unseasonally heavy rain and unfortunately heavy workload have seriously impacted my birding time of late. Last week Caz and I checked out Woodland Wasterwater Ponds in a last-ditch attempt to find a Stilt Sandpiper among the dowitchers. In fact, there was hardly a dowitcher to be seen, as all the suitable shorebird habitat was submerged under 3 feet of water! A few Pectoral Sandpipers were still hanging on, while 8 Great-tailed Grackles was the highest tally I've seen in the county.

North Pond is full again, which means the dowitchers and yellowlegs have moved on, but Black-necked Stilts and Wilson's Snipe are hanging on.

In the Arboretum, a late Townsend's Warbler was a nice surprise. The Greater White-fronted Goose disappeared after only a day, while the Cackling Goose is sticking around. This bird is now often seen away from the goose flock, and appears to have a slight limp.

The 'urban Merlin' which wintered in North Davis last year is back, though I've not had any luck seeing it yet. A great consolation prize was my first county Purple Finch, a female, sitting at the top of a redwood (county bird no. 226). Perhaps 230 before the year's end is within my sights...

A good reason to visit Australia...

Vera, a good friend of mine from my undergrad days, sent me this wonderful picture from Australia - not digiscoped or digibinned, this Kookaburra apparently almost landed in her lap!

Back in the UK, another good friend (Paul P. Cook) has just started a blog on Theoretical Physics. No, I have no idea what it all means either!

Solano Park Garden today held a Golden-crowned Kinglet, yet another sign of the impending winter...

Wacky waterfowl of the arboretum

In the week I've been gone from Davis, it appears that fall has passed and winter is here! It's cold and cloudy, many trees have lost their leaves and Yellow-rumped Warblers, Juncos and Zonotrichia sparrows are back en masse (the large sparrow flock in Solano Park Garden today contained a Chipping).

I rode my bike around the UCD arboretum, bumping into the Peahen who thinks she's a Mallard...

... and good numbers of Wood Duck.

Most interesting of all was the presence of much larger numbers of feral Canada Geese than usual (I estimated at least 300 birds at the west end of the lake alone). This large flock contained a single Cackling Goose (nice size comparison with their bigger, uglier cousins)....

... and a young Greater White-fronted Goose.

Where did these birds originate? Are they escapees, or lost wild birds which joined the first goose flock they could find?

Toronto in the fall

I've just returned from a very pleasant week in Toronto, where I did very little birding (and as a result got lots of work done). I didn't see any new birds for the year, but enjoyed seeing some stuff I don't get to see out west very often (Cardinal, Purple Finch, Slate-colored Junco, Hairy Woodpecker and a White-throated Sparrow flock). Non-birding highlights included a full-blown homemade Thanksgiving dinner, watching the sun set from the revolving restaurant at the top of the CN Tower, a visit to Niagara Falls (enhanced by the dramatic fall colours) and crashing a Royal Canadian Yacht Club party to gorge on lobster, duck, fine wines and exquisite cakes!

We had great fun preparing a traditional turkey dinner for Canadian Thanksgiving, complete with a very British twist - Yorkshire puddings! Prepared with a little help from Delia Smith and a transatlantic phone call to our cookery guru in Cambridge, Susie Stubbings.

mmmm....

The weather was a little better on this visit to the CN Tower.

The view from the revolving restaurant at the top is pretty fantastic (and the food isn't too bad either).

Meeting the local wildlife!

Autumn is a great time of year to visit Niagara, as there are less tourists and the trees are displaying their spectacular fall colours.

A journey on 'Maid of the Mist' offers a different perspective on the falls...

... but be prepared to get soaked!

Andrew, Harry, Brad and I masqueraded as millionaires to crash a party at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club. Here we are reaping the rewards!

Liz stayed home to prepare for the Canadian winter...

On the journey home I took a couple of photos (fall colours and a cloudscape)from the plane window.

All quiet on the western front

Today saw me heading out to Point Reyes for the fourth consecutive weekend, this time as part of a merry band of Yolo Audubonites led by Kevin Guse. The sky was blue, and the wind blew away any traces of coastal fog, showing off the spectacular coastal scenery to its full advantage. However, this also meant that birds were very thin on the ground. So, the trip highlights for me were more great views of Great Horned and Barn Owls (could this be the premier location for viewing these species in the US?). We caught this bird enjoying its morning preen.

This pale morph Ferruginous Hawk put on a great show for us, and at one point was subjected to repeated dive-bombing by a Peregrine!

At Drake's Beach this Palm Warbler (only my second ever) was most obliging as it fed along the edge of the willows. Note the distinctive tail pattern in photos 2 and 3.

I had yet another close encounter with a strange arachnid. This individual looked like a garden spider with a toadstool strapped to its back! If anyone knows the name of this species, please let me know.

One good tern...

When Joan Humphrey called suggesting a lunchtime trip out to Woodland Wastewater Ponds I didn't need much persuading! The water levels have dropped since last week, and the whole place was carpeted with shorebirds. After a brief scan I quickly picked up a Common Tern (my 225th Yolo County bird). Apparently this is only the third documented county record, making it somewhat rarer than last week's Blackpoll Warbler (6th record)! This is about the best picture I could manage through the heat haze, but I've included a few more shots at the end of this article to prove that the carpal bar wasn't just an artefact of the strong lighting.

The heat this lunchtime was pretty intense, so we had the bright idea of combining Joan's garden umbrella with a traffic cone to make an impromptu sunshade!

In the process of moving the traffic cone, we found something far more exciting (to me) than the Common Tern - my first Black Widow Spider!

We moved it a safe distance using the umbrella stand, after which it assumed this odd posture - was it playing dead, or showing the red hourglass on its underside as some sort of threat?

A number of Pectoral Sandpipers were still present, giving amazingly close views. The first picture shows a bird adopting a crouch posture in response to an aerial threat.

More Common Tern pics:

October migrants

Since last weekend's Point Reyes bonanza, things have quietened down a little bird-wise. A Sunday trip to Pedrick Road failed to yield the Blackpoll Warbler, but there was a nice adult winter male Lazuli Bunting. I'd never seen one in this plumage and was trying to turn it into Varied!

Willowbank Ditch on Monday had a nice mix of earlier and later migrants: a Spotted Towhee, Townsend's Warbler, a couple of Hermit Thrushes and two Pacific-slope Flycatchers. Golden-crowned Sparrow was very numerous.

Today (Weds) Pedrick road held a fair selection of warblers, including Black-throated Gray, and another Hermit Thrush. I joined Scott Morrical over at Putah Picnic ground where we saw a large flock of Robins fly over. Amongst these was a real treat - my first Varied Thrush of the fall, which even started singing!

Solano Park Garden was hopping with birds, including the long-staying Nashville Warbler. Also of note here was my first Yolo Oregon Junco of the fall.

Enigmatic Empids

Here are some pictures of Empids seen on Point Reyes on Saturday: click on the thumbnails for larger images.

Here's the adult Yellow-bellied Flycatcher found by the Terrills at the Fish Docks:

The following three photos of this bird were taken by Marcel Holyoak:

This bird at Drake's Beach was initially identified as an immature Yellow-bellied Flycatcher: it appeared to have a narrow eye-ring, a yellow belly, bright buff wingbars and contrasting edges to the flight feathers, all supportive of Yellow-bellied. However, several Pacific-slope Flycatchers observed later in the day showed similarly bold markings, and from certain angles, the eye-ring was distinctly almond-shaped. Note how the plumage tones, and size and shape of the eye ring vary from different angles and lighting conditions.

For comparison, here's another boldly-marked Pacific-slope photographed at the Abandoned Ranch. This one was much easier to identify, as it was very vocal! Again note how bright and contrasty the wing barring is, a feature that supposedly points towards Yellow-bellied...

And finally, here's a much less controversial bird, a smart Least Flycatcher, also seen at the Abandoned Ranch.

Third time lucky at Point Reyes

For the last two weekends, I have headed out to Point Reyes with Marcel Holyoak, and have struggled to find even the common migrants. This Saturday, however, everything had changed: the weather conditions were right (high cloud, calm seas) and birds were everywhere!

Just after dawn we had a brief, unsuccessful look for yesterday's Veery and headed into the New Willows. I quickly found a young female Chestnut-sided Warbler, while Marcel found a Least Flycatcher (after dipping 3 of these in CA, a long-awaited lifer for me) and a bright Tennessee Warbler. This week's surprise mammal sighting was a Gray Fox walking around in broad daylight (unfortunately it vanished before I could digiscope it).

After admiring my first state Black-and-White Warbler and a dark morph Ferruginous Hawk at the Fish Docks, we raced over to Mendoza Ranch to see this Blue-headed Vireo (photo by Marcel Holyoak).

Mendoza was hopping with migrants, including another Least Flycatcher and Chestnut-sided Warbler, and I found what turned out to be a fine Canada Warbler. Two Pectoral Sandpipers were on the pools here. A stop at the Mendoza schoolhouse trees was fruitful, as shortly after arriving my life Palm Warbler flew in! We raced on to the lighthouse following a report of Eastern Kingbird. The kingbird had gone, along with most other migrants apparently, save for a Pine Siskin and this obliging Fox Sparrow.

At Nunes Ranch, a long wait for a Worm-eating Warbler failed to pay off, and we had to content ourselves with yet another Chestnut-sided Warbler (trash bird!), Purple Finch, Oregon Junco and this tan-striped White-throated Sparrow among the hordes of Golden-crowned Sparrows.

News of a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher found by Ryan Terrill saw us racing back to the Fish Docks and sure enough, we got on the bird (see next entry for pics). This Magnolia Warbler (photographed by Marcel) finally showed itself in a pine tree...

... along with this Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

This young Cedar Waxwing had presumably just arrived - the bird seemed completely oblivious to the surrounding crowd of birders.

Drake's Beach yielded my first US Tropical Kingbirds. These birds were very showy, allowing me to admire their big bills, bright underparts and forked tails.

Also at this site was yet another Chestnut-sided Warbler (an adult male) and a photogenic Raven.

The Abandoned Ranch was also very birdy - I found this Black-and-White Warbler...

... and another Least Flycatcher in amongst the more numerous Pac-slopes (see next entry for pictures).

Finally, the RCA radio station yielded a rather drab-looking Western Kingbird, a fine Hermit Thrush,

and a Hermit Warbler, bringing my warbler totals to 14 for the day and 18 for the week!

Yolo Blackpoll!

This morning I spent a good 3 hours waiting for a Kentucky Warbler to appear in the UCD Arboretum. It didn't. The last few days have been most unsatisfactory - I've been unsuccessfully chasing other people's birds when I should have been out finding my own! To redress the balance, this afternoon I headed down to the Pedrick Road bridge over Putah Creek, a spot with a nice mix of vegetation which has been attracting large numbers of the common warblers over the last few weeks. At first sight, it appeared almost birdless, with single Yellowthroat and Blue-gray Gnatcatcher being the highlights. I then spotted two warblers flying across the creek into low willows. These birds subsequently came down to the creek to bathe and drink, and one of them turned out to be a Blackpoll Warbler! I managed to take a few shaky photos of this bird, which spent much of its time accompanying a Yellow Warbler.

The bird showed several times over the next couple of hours, allowing my Bird-a-thon buddies (Joan, Roger and Betty) to get good looks. Having twitched a Blackpoll in Sacramento earlier in the week, and having watched this bird fly from Yolo into Solano County, I've added Blackpoll to three of my Central Valley county lists in a week!

Woodland Waders

A trip to the City of Davis Wetlands with Caz was postponed at the news of Pacific Golden plover and Pectoral Sandpipers at Woodland Wastewater Pond (both county birds, and the former a lifer). Soon after arriving we picked out two Pacific Goldies in the Black-bellied Plover flock.

Caz picked out a roosting Dunlin dwarfing the Least Sandpipers, my first of the fall. We were soon joined by Roger, Joan and Betty (my Bird-a-thon companions), and Sami LaRocca. Just as we were thinking that the Pecs had all disappeared, we spotted one bird hiding in the rocks on the spit, then another, then... 27! This is by far the largest flock of Pectorals I've ever seen.

Here's a view that many a British birder would like to see - 10 Pecs, Greater Yellowlegs, Killdeer, American Avocet, Black-necked Stilt, Least and Western Sandpipers in the same scope view!

Other birds of note include a couple of Wilson's Snipe, a Violet-Green Swallow and a real taste of winter as several skeins of White-fronted Geese flew over. One of them landed, and is seen here with an Eared Grebe.

After such a fun morning's birding, I haven't fared so well. I dipped what would have been my life Swamp Sparrow at North Davis Farms, but did see a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Red-breasted Nuthatch, a couple of noisy Red-shouldered Hawks and a white Cockatiel, presumably the same bird I saw at the opposite end of Davis a few weeks ago. At nearby North Pond, a Lesser Yellowlegs was still present plus the first of the wintering Wilson's Snipe. Today's dip was the county's first Kentucky Warbler in the arboretum, currently the rarest bird in Northern California! Will be back looking for that tomorrow morning, and am hoping that with the hordes of birders present we'll find another eastern goodie too...

10 warbler day...

... in the Central Valley! I met up with Zdenek (from Czechoslovakia) to bird Solano Park Garden, where we found him his life Flicker, Orange-crowned, Yellow and Yellow-rumped Warblers. I also spotted a Nashville Warbler (bike tick!). Having decided it was a good day for warblers, we birded the arboretum, adding Wilson's Warbler to the tally. This late Cattle Egret was still hanging around at the eastern end, close to the now-deserted heron rookery.

At Putah Creek Picnic Ground I ran into several Black-throated Gray Warblers, and at the Pedrick Road bridge produced both Common Yellowthroat and MacGillivray's. I also saw my life American Rubyspots.

My day took a turn for the worse when I arrived at work to find one of my papers had been rejected. However, I soon perked up when Marcel suggested heading over to the American River to look for Chestnut-sided and Blackpoll Warblers. After about an hour of searching we had excellent views of both species, and will hopefully be able to post Marcel's pictures here soon. After a dismal fall migration at Point Reyes, it was gratifying to see such nice birds on my doorstep!