Author Archives: Bruce Aird

In the Eyes of Juncos

We found some early migrant Dark-eyed Juncos grazing like little cows on the lawn at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. The birds were bold, approaching to within 10 feet of us, as they were sheltered from the wind behind a low cement wall. These normally shy little birds were within 15 feet of us. That let us take these photos with a Canon 40D DSLR and a 75-300 mm zoom lens. We took the photos, because a male Oregon Junco and a male Pink-sided Junco provided an interesting juxtaposition here.

Oregon Juncos

Oregon Junco

Let’s back up a bit. For starters, Dark-eyed Junco represents a complex of six different sub-species. Field guides designate these as: Slate-colored, Oregon, Pink-sided, Gray-headed, Red-backed and White-winged. For our purposes here, it’s worth noting that the latter two sub-species generally don’t occur in Southern California. The first four occur here regularly. Of those, the Oregon form is the most common, and it comprises by far the largest portion of our juncos.

Adult Dark-eyed Junco males like our bird have a dark gray or black hood, a brown back and pale pink or rusty flanks. They top this off with a lovely little sharp pink bill and a whitish belly. Ironically, the dark eye, for which the species complex is named, is barely visible in Oregon Juncos since it is essentially the same color as the hood. A good look at our pictured bird shows that it fits this description pretty well.

Pink-sided Juncos

Pink-sided Junco

Contrast that with the other bird. This bird has the same pink bill, but the hood is a light bluish gray. This creates a visible contrast with the blackish area between the bill and the eye (the lore). The back is a pale, dull brown, and a slight wash of the same color is visible in the nape. This bird also shows light pinkish flanks and a paler belly region. In fact, separation of an adult male Oregon from an adult male Pink-sided Junco is not difficult.

Female Oregon Juncos and Gray-headed Juncos provide a potential point of confusion. The best characters to distinguish Pink-sided Junco from Oregon Juncos is the hood. On the Oregon Junco, it’s always darker and they never show black lores. The Gray-headed Junco displays black lores. But it’s distinctly reddish back is much brighter than the dull brown back of a Pink-sided Junco.

How much does all this matter? Experts originally classified the junco forms as full species, distinct from one another. But subsequent genetic analysis revealed that their mitochondrial DNA was too similar for full species designation. The juncos themselves don’t seem to care all that much. Where their ranges overlap, juncos do interbreed. For whatever reasons, when these sub-species interbreed, the result is always one of the color forms or phenotypes; interbreeding doesn’t produce visible intergrades. So in the eyes of juncos, it’s all the same. That means that junco forms are just another one of those games that birders play.

Dragon and Damselflies Up Close and Personal

Lately, we’ve been digiscoping insects while field-testing the Swarovski ATX/STX modular spotting scopes. One of the stand-out features of these scopes is their superb digiscoping capabilities. The scope’s 65-mm objective module close-focuses to 6-feet, meaning it works almost like a macro lens. We played with the scope to see how it would perform taking pictures of dragon- and damselflies. All these odes inhabited a quiet little stream less than a mile from our store!

Blue Dasher

Digiscoping a Blue Dasher Dragonfly

This is a male Blue Dasher, Pachydiplax longipennis, a common dragonfly of southern California. Note the blue abdomen, sea-green eyes and white facial plate, and subtle amber patch on the hind wings. Females are browner on the thorax and abdomen, with cream markings for accent, but they still have the green eyes and white facial plate. Territorial males frequently chase each other around. We commonly find Blue Dashers, members of the skimmer family, over rivers, ponds and streams. They tend to hunt from perches, which means they?re often stationary, making them much easier to photograph!

California Spreadwing

California Spreadwing damselfly

This blue-eyed beauty is a male California Spreadwing damselfly, Archilestes californica. Spreadwings are unusual among damselflies in that they often perch with the wings wide open. The California Spreadwing is told from the Great Spreadwing by the white markings on the thorax flanks, and the two-toned pterostigma. Like the Blue Dasher, this spreadwing is a sally hunter. That means it hawks prey from a perch to which it often returns. To photograph them, we focused on the perch and waited for the hunter to return.

Vivid Dancer

Male Vivid Dancer damselfly

Lastly, here’s a brilliant blue male Vivid Dancer damselfly, Argia vivida. Distinguish these gorgeous little damselflies from other similar species by the carrot-shaped black marks on the abdominal segments. This species occurs in every single county in California, making it our most common one. When Vivid Dancers emerge from their nymph forms, a pale gray pruinescence coats them. That wears off with time to reveal their brilliant color. Vivid Dancers often perch away from water, on rocks, logs and shrubs, as these were doing when we found them.

All these pictures were taken with the Swarovski ATX-65 spotting scope, equipped with the TLS-APO digiscoping adaptor, using a Canon 40D camera.

Digiscoping with the Swarovski ATX-85 Scope

We recently got the new Swarovski ATX-85 spotting scope in for evaluation and have really enjoying digiscoping birds with it. In addition to the crystal clear, tack sharp image quality, this scope also has a really well-designed digiscoping options for point-and-shoot cameras as well as micro 4/3 and standard DSLR cameras. Below are a few modest examples.

A Salton Sea Chase

Nashville Warbler, digiscoped with the Swarovski ATX-85

We drove to the Salton Sea, looking for the recently reported Cave Swallows. There we found a group of Nashville Warblers playing in a palo verde tree, easily 70 yards away. In this case, the distance actually helped, as it gave us a few more seconds’ time to get one of these hyper-kinetic little birds in frame for long enough to snap off a shot or two. Most of the shots didn’t work out, primarily because of obscuring branches, but this one did. Now how often do you see people digiscoping a quick bird like a Nashville Warbler?! This picture was taken with a Nikon CoolPix P 300 camera, using Swarovski’s DCB II adaptor and the Swarovski ATX-85 spotting scope.

More Local Digiscoping

Digiscoping a Greater Yellowlegs with the ATX-85

We chased a potential Solitary Sandpiper along San Diego Creek in Irvine early one morning. It was a very gray, overcast morning with a heavy marine layer, so there wasn’t much light available. We dipped on the Solitary but got this very handsome Greater Yellowlegs as compensation. We pushed the ISO setting on the Nikon CoolPix to 800 to stop the motion of this actively feeding bird. Thereafter, everything came pretty easily.

Lastly, given that this is a system new to us, working quickly under sub-optimal conditions, the results were good! We are really looking forward to getting to know it well!

A Yellow-crowned Night-Heron in Orange County

Sub-adult Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

We recently visited Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve to look for the reported juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-Heron. This is one of those location, location, location things. In Florida, a Yellow-crowned Night-Heron excites nobody. But in California, where for decades the nearest breeding population of these night-herons was down in Baja somewhere, it’s a pretty uncommon bird. In recent years, a small Yellow-crowned Night-Heron population has become established in an apartment complex in Imperial Beach, CA, in the shadow of Tijuana. Even so, a Yellow-crowned Night-Heron away from there is newsworthy in southern California.

At the time, this immature bird constituted the second confirmed record for Orange County. The first one showed up in 1977 at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary. We see Yellow-crowned Night-Herons regularly now. This suggests the presence of a more local breeding population. But back then, a lot of local birders chased this bird.

The Heron was Elusive

We went on a Saturday morning, with someone who had seen the bird only the day before. Thus, we were confident of success. Naturally, we couldn’t find the stupid bird! We circled the entire pond under the bluff there. We checked out every immature Black-crowned Night-Heron on the property, without any success. Finally, it turned out that the Yellow-crowned Night-Heron was actually roosting among a large group of Black-crowned Night-Herons in the trees right where we started. The night-heron cooperated, but only grudgingly. It gave us long looks at fairly minimal distance. But it perched in a dense tangle of branches that always obscured it. Eventually we got a few photos.

A Gift Burrowing Owl

Wintering Burrowing Owl

Next, we searched the ground squirrel burrows around the mesa looking for returning Burrowing Owls. Eventually we found one bird. The didn’t get great views because the bird never completely emerged from its burrow. But at least we found it. Later in the day, someone else found a second bird. Burrowing Owls are often hard to locate. If you don?t know how or where to look for them, overlooking them is easy.

Burrowing Owls are tough to come by in Orange County. Widespread development pretty much gobbled up virtually all grassland habitat in the county. A small breeding population of this species subsists in an area closed to the public. Also, scattered wintering birds pop up as winter migrants, like the Bolsa Chica birds. Hopefully, these two will stick around for the upcoming Coastal Christmas Bird Count!

The pictures were taken by digiscoping with a Kowa TSN-884 spotting scope and a Nikon CoolPix P6000 (Night-Heron) or a Kowa TSN-883 with a Nikon CoolPix P300 (Burrowing Owl). The optics were mounted on a Manfrotto MT055CXPRO3 carbon fiber tripod with a MVH500AH pro fluid digiscoping head.

A Common Cuckoo for California

Common Cuckoo

When someone found a Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) at Watsonville Slough, we knew we had to try for it. Common Cuckoo is an Old World species with a broad distribution in Europe and Asia, with some wintering in Africa. You’ll note though that none of those places include California! In fact, the species is regular if not annual on the islands of western Alaska. However, prior to the Watsonville bird, only one previous sighting in the lower 48 states existed. That bird graced Martha’s Vinyard more than 30 years ago. This Common Cuckoo may be common in Asia, but south of Canada, it’s decidedly uncommon. We anxiously watched the birding hotlines through Saturday. After the latest sighting in the afternoon, we decided to go for it. How do you resist a bird this good?!

Arriving in Watsonville

We arrived in Watsonville in the wee hours of the morning. We tried four different motels before finally secured lodgings for the little remaining night. Dawn came really early the next morning, and dragging ourselves out of bed was an act of will. But hey, we’re birders and Common Cuckoo is a killer bird so we did it. So did a lot of other people, as it turned out. Over 50 birders crowded Ramsay Park as we pulled up. And in something of an anti-climax, they already had the bird in view as we walked up. We decided we could live with that!

Sub-adult Common Cuckoo

This Common Cuckoo may only have been an immature, but it was already a veteran when it came to positioning itself. The bird frequented willows on the western edge of Watsonville Slough. There it expertly selected perches that invariably placed it right in front of the sun from the only available vantage points. It also chose spots where there were always intervening branches and leaves in front of it. That confounded all auto-focusing. We took many obstructed photos. These are some of the shots that were a little less so. Note the lovely orange orbital ring and the gorgeous barring to the chest. These images were captured through a Kowa TSN-884 spotting scope equipped with 20-60x zoom eyepiece and a Nikon CoolPix P6000 camera attached using a Kowa TSN-DA-10 digiscoping adapter. We mounted the optics on a Manfrotto 701HDV,055CXV3 carbon fiber tripod with a digiscoping head.

Yellow-billed Magpie: Another Roadside Attraction

We were driving back from central California when we stopped at the rest stop near Camp Roberts on U.S. Route 101. We consistently find Yellow-billed Magpie at this particular rest stop and did on this visit as well. We had only been there for a few minutes when 4 or 5 of these handsome birds flew in and began feeding in the leaf litter under the large, spreading oaks.

Endemics

Yellow-billed Magpie is endemic to California, meaning they live no place else on the planet besides here. Birders always prize endemics over those more widespread species. They are big, beautiful and intelligent members of the family Corvidae, which includes all crows, ravens and jays worldwide. As such, they are often pretty skittish and seldom allow close approach. At this rest stop, however, they became habituated to being around people, which means they are easier to photograph. Even so, we chose to digiscope them from distance rather than approach closely. From farther away, the birds relax some and act naturally in our presence. This video was taken with a Nikon CoolPix P300 digital camera attached to a Kowa TSN-883 spotting scope.

Notice also how little yellow skin these magpies show around the face. The amount of yellow facial skin shown by a Yellow-billed Magpie varies with the individual. It may also vary with differing molt states. In our experience, the magpies at this particular site show more yellow than those in other places we’ve been.

(If the video doesn’t load properly, try refreshing the screen and then retry. We’re seeing this a lot lately.)

Black-throated Magpie-Jays

We spent part of Labor Day 2012 in extreme southern San Diego County, looking for a “mythical” Crested Caracara. Our search covered the sod farms and Dairy Mart Ponds. It even included Border Fields State Park right to the ocean. We checked out every Red-tailed, Red-shouldered and Cooper’s Hawk in view, but the National Bird of Mexico gave us the slip yet again. Instead, it another Mexican bird claimed our attention. We stopped at the community garden off Hollister and found a group of 3 or 4 Black-throated Magpie-Jays. What a striking bird!! At roughly 2 feet in length including the tail, Black-throated Magpie-Jays are huge! They show gorgeous azure plumage with a black chest, cheek and crest set off against white underparts.

A Gorgeous Exotic

These birds show many classic characteristics of the jay family including garrulous behavior and roguish personality. As it turns out, they share another annoying jay trait: the ability to avoid a camera most of the time! We saw one flock of at least 11 of these birds. The one pictured is probably a sub-adult. Note the white at the tips of the crest and the pale nape. It’s still evolving the darker blue of an adult bird. The adults have a completely black crest and a nape that is the same blue as the back. We talked with other San Diego birders and heard things like “Oh, that?s a yard bird in my neighborhood.”

That suggests that the population of these jays is larger and less local than you might think. Jays are smart and adaptable birds. For now, experts treat Black-throated Magpie-Jay as an escapee or a released bird. But if juveniles and sub-adults begin showing up in numbers, they may be here to stay! The Black-throated Magpie-Jay was digiscoped with a Kowa TSN-883 spotting scope, a Sayegh Digidapter for Kowa TE-10Z and TE-11WZ, and a Kowa TE-11WZ 25-60x Zoom Eyepiece.

Summer Vacation in St. Augustine

Argiope Spider on its web

We recently attended a family reunion in St. Augustine, Florida where 14 of us from 4 generations packed into a single beach house. If it sounds crazy, that’s only because it was, but what a blast! The house sat on the inland waterway side of Anastasia Island. Still, it was just a 5-minute walk to the Atlantic Ocean beach. The inland waterway was an ever-changing wildlife tableau. Ospreys always remained in sight over the waterway. Belted Kingfishers chattered as they flew by, and squadrons of Brown Pelicans cruised by.

The waterway got much more active when low tide exposed the oyster beds. This brought a bevy of Snowy and Great Egrets, Great Blue, Little Blue and Tricolored Herons to feed. At high tide, a small family group of Bottle-nosed Dolphins including one juvenile the waterway was patrolled by. We even saw the telltale large, finless shape of a distant manatee once or twice. Even the yard had its wildlife. The only Prairie Warbler of the trip was in the backyard. The large, fierce-looking but harmless garden spiders were everywhere you looked. They didn’t usually erect their elaborate webs across walkways, but it paid to watch where you walked! This is a female Black and Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia) showing the typical zig-zag central panel in its web.

Wonderful Wildlife

Marsh Rabbit

The St. Augustine trip wasn’t a birding trip specifically. But we still found a lot of wildlife at places like Faver Dikes State Park, Anastasia State Park. We also visited Guana/Tolomato/Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve. The walk to the Atlantic beach took us through a nature reserve in the dunes east of the island. These dunes support a healthy population of gopher tortoises. Their burrows make them a keystone species in this habitat, much like woodpeckers in a forest environment. A unique sub-species of the marsh rabbit (Sylvilagus palustris paludicola) lives there, characterized by darker reddish fur and smaller, more circular ears, as shown by the one pictured here.

Shorebirds

Ruddy Turnstone

The Atlantic beach hosted a small group of regular species, including many Laughing Gulls, Royal and Forster’s Terns with the occasional Sandwich Tern mixed in, and an array of shorebirds including Willets, Sanderlings and Ruddy Turnstones that were still mostly in alternate plumage. Getting out just after dawn provided perfect soft light for taking pictures of these colorful shorebirds. At this time, we shared the beach with fewer people and their dogs, which also simplified the photography! We usually got first choice of whatever the ocean gods had chosen to bring forth overnight. Sometimes the waves brought in a dead fish or crab, and invariably there would be a turnstone or a Sanderling picking at it.

Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly

Faver-Dikes State Park

Faver-Dikes State Park was only about 8 miles from the house. This is an open woodland habitat of palmetto understory beneath a mixed hardwood and conifer forest on the shores of a marshy lake system. We saw our first Wood Storks and alligators and heard our first Carolina Wrens, Northern Cardinals and Great Crested Flycatchers here. A gorgeous Yellow-throated Warbler came in to pishing here, but not come close enough for photos. The diversity of insects and other arthropods here is staggering. There were dragonflies of every possible description, huge grasshoppers and quite a few butterflies and moths. We saw Zebra Heliconian butterflies here, but they were invariably just passing through. This Pipevine Swallowtail made us work before settling for long enough for a photograph.

St. Augustine has Great Amphibeans

Southern Toad

The trails at Guana River featured several marvelous boardwalks over open marsh land where the concentration and variety of dragonflies was incredible. Amphibians became the unexpected stars of the show here – there were toads and frogs everywhere. We saw mostly little 1-inch long Oak Toads (Bufo quercicus), but also some larger Southern Toads (Anaxyrus terrestris). This unusual color morph of Southern Toad was about a 2-inches long. These toads vary in color from mottled brown and tan through orange to almost rust red. Most of Florida is sandy. Accordingly, every toad we saw carried at least some grains of sand adhering to its back.

Green Treefrog

This American Green Tree Frog (Hyla cinerea) was sitting on a picnic table at the trail head. These little frogs are remarkably arboreal, as well as quite variable in color. This one had a notably yellowish gape and grayish underparts and feet. Other frogs of the same species are completely green underneath. We never saw the most interesting amphibian of the trip: the Eastern Narrow-mouthed Toad (Gastrophryne carolinensis). These bizarre little toads make a noise that sounds exactly like a tiny little sheep suffering from a cold – a sort of nasal bleat. They are simply hilarious!

St. Augustine Alligator Farm

Tricolored Heron

We visited two locations you might not think of for birding. One was the famous St. Augustine Alligator Farm. This business also acts like a zoo, featuring more than 30 species of crocodilians from around the world. Sadly, many alligators and crocodiles merit threatened or endangered status. They also conduct and sponsor lots of research on crocodilians. It is also a world-class tourist trap! One of the attractions is a boardwalk through a swamp that houses a simply amazing density of alligators, but also a very active heron, egret and spoonbill rookery.

Evidently, the gators keep terrestrial predators like raccoons and opossums out of the nests, so even with the occasional clumsy nestling becoming lunch for an alligator, they still have higher nesting success than they would elsewhere. It certainly provides marvelous photographic opportunities. We saw many active nests of Tricolored and Little Blue Herons along with Snowy and Cattle Egrets. There were many spoonbills and Wood Storks roosting there though we didn’t see any active nests. The Tricolored Herons seemed to specialize in nesting just off the walkway where they made great subjects.

Roseate Spoonbill in St. Augustine

Roseate Spoonbill

Oddly, some of the best bird photography came from an urban site: the pond of the St. Augustine Hospital. We discovered these birds by accident. They seemed somewhat less skittish of close approach here than at some of the more natural settings. This flooded urban pond held the only Anhingas and Mottled Ducks we found on our trip. It also housed a mixed flock of 20-30 Roseate Spoonbills and 15-20 White Ibises of varying ages. The spoonbills were pretty shy, not allowing very close approach, and they often launched and took off to the other side of the lake where there was no access. This one showed some signs of nervousness at my approach, so I had to freeze and wait for it to calm down again, but it was well worth the wait!

White Ibis

White Ibis at St. Augustine Hospital

In contrast to the spoonbills, the White Ibis were pretty nonchalant. I often had one walk by between me and the one I was photographing, completely ignoring me! We saw quite a few different ages of sub-adult White Ibis here. Some were more gray than white. Whereas others were almost completely white with just traces of smudging on the crown, neck and wings. The adult pictured here shows a lovely blue iridescence in the black feathers of the folded wing. And that pale blue eye just grabs your attention! Overall, we had a great trip. The pair of soaring circling Swallow-tailed Kites we saw while driving to the airport were just icing on the cake.

Westminster Park, San Diego

We attended the San Diego Bird Festival at the beginning of March, like we do pretty much every year. It’s always fun to see all those familiar folks and get in some good birding time too. Recently, San Diego Audubon took over organization of this birding festival. They did a great job of maintaining the excellence of this long-running festival.

One of the logical changes they made was to keep the vendor booths closed in the early mornings when all the festival participants are out on trips anyway, which meant that, after arriving early to set up the booth on the first day, we had extra time in the mornings, which we of course used to go birding! This allowed us to pursue some of the interesting birds that were over-wintering in the greater San Diego Area, such as the Grace’s Warbler at a nearby cemetery, the Thick-billed Kingbird, back for its second year in Chula Vista, and so on.

Summer Tanager in Westminster Park, San Diego

Local Celebrity Birds

We searched for a Palm Warbler reported at nearby Westminster Park. This little neighborhood pocket park nestles in the north end of the Point Loma Peninsula. We parked in the empty lot and walked out onto a lawn fringed with red-flowering eucalyptus and sycamores. It didn’t seem at all like Palm Warbler habitat at first glance. Evidently, the warbler was of the same mind since it apparently left.

The place was just crawling with warblers though, mostly Yellow-rumps and Orange-crowns, with the occasional Townsend’s mixed in for excitement. We started pishing from a strategic location and soon had a crowd of irritated birds and one house cat interested. Seriously – we actually pished in a cat – it didn’t jump up on the fence until we started making noise! Anyway, the next thing emerging from the trees was this handsome young male Summer Tanager. He frustrated us by always staying in the shadows whenever he perched, but we still managed to photo-document him adequately.

Wild Parrots

Red-masked Parakeet in Westminster Park, San Diego

The next thing to arrive was a noisy flock of Aratinga parakeets. Small flocks of these birds roam all over Point Loma Peninsula. We’ve seen them in several other locations there. They seem to really like the red-flowering eucalyptus trees, as evidenced by this shot.

We identified these birds as Red-masked Parakeets, also known as Cherry-headed Conures. A book about the wild parrots on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco made this species made famous. Separate them from the similar Mitred Parakeet by the more extensive red on the head, crown and face. They also show more red in the leading edge of the wing, particularly in the wrist. It surprised us as always how well they blended into the trees once they made their typically loud entrance. They were actually hard to pick out in the scope even when rustling around right in front of us.

These pictures were all taken with a Nikon CoolPix P300 digital camera, attached to a Kowa TSN-883 spotting scope with a Kowa TE-11WZ 25-60x Zoom Eyepiece using Sayegh Digidapter for Kowa TE-10Z and TE-11WZ.

Arctic Loon-acy

In January of 2012, birders at the Morro Bay Birding Festival discovered an Arctic Loon in San Simeon. Instantly, we knew we needed to chase it. You just cannot pass up a bird this good! So we started planning. We would leave before dawn, travel light, and take in a bunch of other spots on the way back… Which is why three of us met at 4 am on a Sunday morning. We stuffed a bunch of scopes and other gear into the back of an SUV and took off. Staying awake on the way there wasn’t hard. Rarity chases get the blood flowing! Hopes run high (this was a life bird for two of us) and the conversation never lags.

Arctic Loon in basic plumage

Arctic Loon!

When we got to the spot at 8:15 am, two of California’s best-known birders greeted us warmly: “What took you so long?!” The loon sat there right in front of us at close range, a total anticlimax! It fished in the same small lagoon at the mouth of San Simeon Creek. There it rubbed shoulders with the gulls, coots, cormorants and grebes, pretty much slumming it. This Arctic Loon was not at all shy, swimming about and preening unconcernedly while allowing close approach of multiple birders with their scopes, tripods and cameras with big lenses. We got stunning looks and took tons of pictures, some of which even came out!

Blinking Arctic Loon

These shots were all taken with a Nikon CoolPix P300 camera, attached with a Sayegh Digidapter for Kowa TE-10Z and TE-11WZ to a Kowa TSN-883 spotting scope equipped with a Kowa TE-11WZ 25-60x Zoom Eyepiece. That’s it. Just point and shoot. The loon did make things challenging occasionally by diving – loon watching is frequently an intermittent occupation. With the bird as close as this, sometimes it was hard to actually keep it in frame, but who’s complaining?! And of course sometimes there’s a bit of luck involved. Here, the camera accidentally caught the bird blinking the nictitating membrane after coming up from a dive. The only difficulty here was in picking which of the hundred photographs to use for this post!

Yellow-billed Magpie

Other Local Attractions

You would think it would be all downhill from there. However, on this fabulous whirlwind birding trip, hits just kept coming. Chestnut-backed Chickadee – probably a dirt-bird to the locals, but we don’t get to see those very often in Orange County. In the day, we saw 4 of the world’s 5 loon species, all three scoters and 6 of our 7 grebe species.

Tracking inland from there and making our way back south, we saw a pair of Golden Eagles and a brilliant male Lapland Longspur in the company of about a hundred Horned Larks. We also saw one of California’s two endemic bird species: Yellow-billed Magpies. This provided a showcase for what digiscoping can do by way of photo-documentation. This magpie was easily 75 yards distant and crawling through obscuring grass on a hillside beneath live oaks, yet the camera still did a passable job with it. In the end though, the best bird of the day was still that magnificent loon.

Optics4Birding Nature Blog

Animals, Birds, Nature in depth articles