Ed Levin area birding..
Late report, but I spent a couple of hours at Ed Levin and up on Marsh road sunday afternoon. I started at Ed Levin in the elms parking lot to see if I could find the acorn woodpeckers. Turns out they’re doing construction (well, destruction) on the playground and big, noisy machinery was chomping on things, so I didn’t see much of anything and didn’t stay long.
ended up headed to the first parking lot overlooking the lake, nearest the elms lot. The lake was pretty empty: some coots, some mallards, three scaups and some cormorants. I had a belted kingfisher fly by before I got out of the car, and never saw it again. Yellow-rumps chipping all over the place, two robins bathing in the stream and some scrub jays being scrub jays were the highlights. Nothing too interesting, but nice and quiet.
Marsh road was pretty quiet as well. the pond in the pasture near the start of Marsh was empty, not even canada geese. Didn’t see the turkeys or quail or bluebirds that hang out on the road; turns out the stream is dry, and so that area was pretty quiet. down near the end there was a large flock of blackbirds hanging out with the cows; I looked for tri-color, but there were three magpies also hanging out there and they kept starting panic flights and keeping everything in motion. I looked for raptors, but as far as I could tell, they were doing it because it amused them to get the blackbirds riled up.
Along the road down on the flat I did run into a small sparrow flock; in it was at least one (and possibly 2-3) Lark sparrows. One was nice enough to sit for photos, but I haven’t had time to process them. That was the highlight bird for the day.
One critter highlight: a lone coyote in one of the fields (near the pond near marsh road) wandering around looking for moles on the way out.
Location: Marsh Road, Calaveras
Observation date: 11/17/08
Number of species: 14
Turkey Vulture X
Red-tailed Hawk X
Anna’s Hummingbird X
Black Phoebe X
Western Scrub-Jay X
Yellow-billed Magpie 3
American Crow X
European Starling X
Lark Sparrow 1
White-crowned Sparrow X
Dark-eyed Junco X
Red-winged Blackbird X
Western Meadowlark X
Brewer’s Blackbird X
Location: Ed Levin Park area
Observation date: 11/16/08
Number of species: 14
Mallard X
Greater/Lesser Scaup X
Double-crested Cormorant X
Turkey Vulture X
American Coot X
Anna’s Hummingbird X
Belted Kingfisher 1
Black Phoebe X
Western Scrub-Jay X
American Crow X
Chestnut-backed Chickadee X
American Robin X
Yellow-rumped Warbler X
White-crowned Sparrow X
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