A Sonoma County Park

Those who visit here very often won’t be surprised to hear that the highlight of my recent visit to Santa Rosa was my walks through this Sonoma County Park, NOT my wife’s class reunion.

The first time we walked there I was accompanied by Leslie, Jeff, and Debbie. Though I dragged my feet more than others preferred, we didn’t take the time needed to really get the best possible bird shots. Remarkably, I did manage to get a few good shots, particularly this shot of a Red-Shouldered Hawk, that flew into a tree right in front of us, the first I’ve ever seen.

Red-Shouldered Hawk

My favorite shot of the day, though, was this one of a mature Green Heron, a bird I’ve stalked many times locally, but have never managed to get this good of shot of before.

Green Heron

The dominant bird in the park, though, was the Acorn Woodpecker and, while I got several shots of them, I never got a shot I liked that first day.

I also had left my wide angle lens home, so I couldn’t really take any scenic shots, a mistake I remedied the next day when I came back alone to take pictures. With no one anxious to get in a hardy walk, I had time to set up and take some scenic shots.

Santa Rosa Hillside with Oaks

More importantly, I had the time to wait for the Acorn Woodpeckers to forget I was there and move in close enough that I could get a good shot.

Acorn Woodpecker

In the process of taking pictures, I managed to get in a much tougher hike than the day before, nearly exhausting myself in the 80º weather.

5 thoughts on “A Sonoma County Park”

  1. Love your photo of Northern California’s golden hills and oak trees as well as those of the birds that inhabit them.

  2. hi loren! seeing the red-shouldered hawk takes me back twenty five years to a time when i lived in an apartment building in toronto on the ninth floor. one evening around dusk i noticed a bird resting on the railing of the balcony. it was a red-shouldered hawk. this in itself was amazing – to see such a beautiful bird in the middle of a city – but then i noticed that it flew to the top of a lampost near some subway marshalling yards and then from there, over to a tree in a nearby park and then back to my balcony. okay. so what made this even more amazing is that another red-shouldered hawk was flying the same triangle, a stage or two behind the first.

    beautiful blog loren! wow!
    steven

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