OC birding pics (and a flock of western kingbirds….)

So I have finally wrestled Lightroom into a truce (more on that later), and I’ve posted a few birding pics from this week onto flickr for your amusement.

I never get tired of watching Pelicans — in fact, sitting on the water in Arcata sometime in the mid 90’s is really the first time I found myself attracted to bird watching, although I didn’t get serious about it until much later. So here, to bore you to tears, are even more pelican pictures!

This one is really nice because it’s both an adult and a first-year kid, and if you look at the primary flight feathers on both, you can see how the kid’s feathers are still growing in (for non-birders, the primary flights are the long ones at the outside edges of the wings); the kid’s tail isn’t quite finished, either.

Dana Point harbor is a serious hangout for Brown Pelicans, so it’s a great place to go and reliably get shots like this, especially when the day boats come in.

Here’s the surprise of the trip so far — the wood duck sitting in the middle of the Santa Ana River. Not what I was expecting, that’s for sure.

And finally, the Reddish Egret out at Bolsa Chica:

and when you have an itch, you must scratch:

I also wanted to get in a walk, so when I went out to run a couple of quick errands (almost outta milk, out of lettuce) I hit up Tri-City park in Placentia. We’ve had a cold, brisk wind all day and I wasn’t sure if that’d shut down activity or convince something interesting to hole up there for better weather. In fact, a bit of both. As I was driving up to the park, about a block away, I saw three birds on a light pole, and suddenly one bugged and I noticed a yellow breast; it looked like a western kingbird, but that would be a weird place for it. But when I got to Tri-City, I found a bunch more — at one point, 7 on the phone wires over the lake, all taking turns bugging (well, mostly. they sometimes chased the same bug, and once two came within inches of braining each other). With the three a block away, I counted 11 definite individuals, a large grouping. Other than that, though, it was pretty quiet; the only warbler I found other than a couple of yellow-rumps was an orange-crowned, and that was it for the canopy. On the water, the usual suspects for a mallard magnet like this pond. The Wigeons haven’t arrived for the winter, and the Emperor Geese (not countable, they’re established escapees) haven’t left….

Location:     tri-city park
Observation date:     10/4/09
Number of species:     13

Canada Goose     4
Mallard     X
Great Egret     2
American Coot     X
Mourning Dove     X
Belted Kingfisher     1
Black Phoebe     3
Western Kingbird     11
American Crow     X
Northern Rough-winged Swallow     6
Orange-crowned Warbler     1
Yellow-rumped Warbler     X
Brewer’s Blackbird     5

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)

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