A Brit abroad

Yolo winter fayre

Today Roger Adamson and I birded from dawn til dusk with Jim Beard from Virginia, who was hoping to fill a few gaps in his California list. We started in the Yolo Wildlife Area for the dawn flyout. Visibility was excellent, and we were treated to an excellent view of the sunrise over the Sierra. Birds of note included at least ten American Bitterns, and several flocks of Tundra Swans, White-fronted, Snow and Ross's Geese. The highlight of the day had to be our astonishing encounter with rails. We stopped the car to look at this obliging Sora...

... which disappeared into the cat-tails to be replaced by this Virginia Rail.

The Sora then fed right next to the Virginia, in the same scope view!

I was only able to capture a blurry preface of what was to come next. The Virginia snuck up behind the Sora...

... the Sora took exception, and the two fought for a few seconds before retreating to a respectable distance!

After a fruitless search for a White-throated Sparrow in Davis, we headed out to Winters, where a little perseverance was rewarded with the biggest flock of Lark Sparrows I've ever seen, and nearby 4 Vesper Sparrows.

Putah Creek Canyon was again eerily quiet for passerines, but we did get great views of 3 drake Barrow's Goldeneye and an Osprey plucking a fish. Lake Solano was as birdy as I've ever seen it, with good numbers of Snipe, Yellowlegs, American Wigeon, Common Mergansers and 2 playful River Otters. We paused in Winters, where Jim treated us to a delicious lunch in the Putah Creek Cafe, before getting nice looks at a Rock Wren at the Winters Sewage Ponds.

We spent much of the afternoon in the Dunnigan Hills area in search of longspurs amongst the hundreds of Horned Larks. No joy, but driving up Road 85 gave us excellent looks at 2 fighting Ferruginous Hawks, the returning Harlan's Hawk (camera-shy as ever), and 4 Mountain Bluebirds, including this cobalt-blue male.

We finished the day in north Davis, where Jim found North Pond a very changed place from when he birded there 20 years ago. It did yield his first CA Aleutian Goose: this individual had a very bold neck collar, and was barely the size of the accompanying Mallards.

Two interacting Merlins at the regular spot were Jim's 6th state bird of the day, and rounded off a wonderful day's winter birding.

Posted by rjhall at December 5, 2005 3:42 AM