Category: Birds

On our way down to Arizona we stopped at the Sacramento NWR but didn’t feel like we had time to stop at Colusa, just a few miles away from the Sacramento NWR.  Leaving from Fresno, though, I thought we would have time to do Merced, Colusa and Sacramento. Unfortunately, birding was so good at Merced that we didn’t see a lot of birds at Colusa that we hadn’t seen a few hours before.  

Snow Geese were the most common birds at Colusa, even though they weren’t there in the same numbers as we had seen them in the past.

The Snow Geese at Colusa are distinctive in that they all seem to have rust-colored heads, which must come from clay in the water.  Strangely enough, the Snow Geese at Sacramento NWR, just 30 miles north, don’t have those rust-colored heads. 

nor do the Greater White-fronted Geese at Colusa, probably because they mostly eat seeds and waste grain in fields, and graze on new growth.

As usual in California, we saw Great Egrets throughout our trip, but this is a nice closeup Leslie took.

The highlight of this visit was the discovery that the Black-crowned Night-heron rookery seems to be coming back.  

There aren’t nearly as many Night-heron as there was when we first sighted them several years ago, but there weren’t any on our last two visits. We’re hoping there will be a resurgence by our next visit. 

Even though there is a lot of overlap between birds observed at Sacramento NWR and the Colusa NWR, I’ve never seen a Night Heron at Sacramento and I’ve usually seen them at Colusa.  On the other hand, I have often seen Avocets at Sacramento, but can’t remember ever seeing one at Colusa. More importantly, we get to see bird we seldom see at home.

When we weren’t seeing birds while out birding, Ruth Sullivan used to say, “All we need is one good bird.” On a good day, of course, you should see hundreds of good birds, not one.  These last shots from Fresno were actually taken on two different days.  

We actually saw yesterday’s House Finch while trying to get closer to this American Kestrel.

We never did get close to it, and it steadfastly refused to leave the safety of its perch.  I’m sure I’ve gotten better shots of Kestrels, but I still love this shot.

After hunting down the Kestrel, I noticed two Acorn Woodpeckers on some adjoining palms.  I think this one was actually building a nest since that hole is much too large to hold any kind of nut that an Acorn Woodpecker could carry up there.

We regularly see Acorn Woodpeckers in Santa Rosa, but, since we weren’t able to fit Santa Rosa in this trip, I was particularly happy to see a pair of them.

On a later walk I spotted a Red-Tailed Hawk circling overhead. Whenever I see an eagle or hawk soaring overhead I try to get a photo. Sometimes I get lightheaded and feel like I’m about to fall over.  Most of the time I end up with nothing but blue or white sky.  Occasionally, I actually capture the bird within the frame, but the breast and wings are completely obscured by shadow.  

This one, though, circled me repeatedly and low enough that I wondered at one point if it was about to land. I suspect this might be the best shot I’ve ever taken of a Red-Winged Hawk in flight.

Right after we spotted the hawk, we started walking down a road that was supposed to lead to the trail.  Before long a worker came over and told us we were in a restricted area.  We had a short conversation and we told him we were just out birding.  He asked me if we had seen the Phainopeplas that were nesting nearby.  I had never heard of such a bird and had to ask him to repeat the name.  He reckoned we could walk a little further down the road where he pointed out this female Phainopepla.  

The Phainopepla was apparently used to people because she perched there for a good five minutes while I tried to get a better shot through a thicket of branches.

A quick search after we were home revealed that the male Phainopepla is jet black and much more striking, but it was still exciting to photograph the female.

When I was teaching, I used to meet students in Safeway who seemed shocked that I shopped for food.  We get so used to seeing a person in a particular setting that we do not see them at all; they fade into the background.  

I’m afraid that happens with birds, too.  When we see a species often, we give it a “name” and don’t really look at it anymore.  I’m sure I’ve been guilty of replying “Oh, that’s just a House Finch” when someone new to birding points one out. 

If we had seen a lot of birds in Fresno, I might not have paid any attention to this House Finch flying to a feeder. 

However, I didn’t immediately recognize what it was, so I tracked it until it landed in a nearby shrub

and then flew even higher, where his brilliant red head and chest stood out more clearly against the blue sky.

I’ve said this before, but I think it bears repeating that walking around with a camera makes you more aware of your environment. I labeled it “The Zen of Canon” way back in May of 2004. 

It’s certainly not a new idea. Coincidentally, I encountered this quote from Henry Miller on Facebook while working on this blog entry: “The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” 

Sounds sort of Whitmanesque, doesn’t it, maybe even Zen-like.