November 18, 2004
Scouting
The Central Valley Birding Symposium is fast approaching, providing me with a great excuse to join Joan Humphrey in some county birding, under the pretext of scouting out sites for the trip she's leading. Our ulterior motive was to increase our lists for the Central Valley Big Year, which started November 1st. At out first stop in Winters, a fruiting tree was proving to be highly attractive to Cedar Waxwings.
The Common Loon appears to have moved on from Lake Solano, although duck numbers are building up here and we heard both Pine Siskin and Sora. Hopefully these displaying tom Turkeys won't end up as someone's Thanksgiving dinner!
A male Pileated Woodpecker at the Lake Solano bridge was a nice surprise. Nearby, this Red-tailed Hawk was having a hard time attempting to swallow a squirrel!
Putah Creek Canyon produced a nice selection of birds, many of which were within the Central Valley birding region. We saw at least 5 Rufous-crowned Sparrows, perhaps birds displaced by October's chaparral fires.
Anyone know what this butterfly is? Answer: It's a Common Buckeye! (thanks Jon and Andrew)
Other birds of note included Golden Eagle, Merlin, Wrentit, my first county Rock Wren (at last!), and this delightful species pair, dream finds of many a British birder...
Finally, a brief visit to the City of Davis Wetlands yielded the regular Western Gull, several Glaucous-winged and Herring Gulls and my first county Thayer's Gull. ADDENDUM: Steve Hampton rightly points out that the gull pictured below is a Glaucous-winged, not Thayers!
This brings my current lists to 423 for the ABA year list, 232 for the Yolo County year list and 133 for the Central Valley Big Year.
Am pretty sure that's a Common Buckeye, Junonia coenia
But I might be wrong!
Posted by: Jon at November 18, 2004 12:50 PM