I went on a pontoon boat birding ride into the Upper Newport Bay today. It was fun but not too birdy. The best bird was a Reddish Egret.
Afterwards I went over to the Environmental Nature Center in Costa Mesa to look for Japanese White-eyes and saw around 10. These birds are very small (3") and very hyper.
It is very cool to see lots of birds doing the nest building thing right now - we saw a bunch of Cliff Swallows gathering mud from a puddle at a trailhead yesterday, but the camera was at home... Some more SW birds from this Spring:
Verdin, Tucson mountain parks
Credit: BrassNuts
Bewick's Wren, Morongo Valley CA
Credit: BrassNuts
Pair of Redtails in an old Saguaro, Phoenix. The boy has some breakfast between his feet on top.
Credit: BrassNuts
Costa's Hummingbird, Phoenix
Credit: BrassNuts
Mockingbird poses between imitating car alarms ;-)
Nice one, Bob! But why is he giving you the Stnkeye?
BTW, Blue Grosbeaks are the House Sparrow of Portal. And keep an eye out for the Cuckoo
I saw there last year. I was sitting on the patio of the 'joint' drinking a beer while it was too hot
to bird and it flew by up the creek. My kind of birding!
African birds HB Central Pk a couple days ago...
The proud Egyptian Geese parading 5 new goslings.
An interesting ancient Egyptian painting of these geese: http://ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com/tag/geese/
Egyptian Goose family
Credit: Plan B
Egyptian Gosling
Credit: Plan B
And there were 2 pairs of African Pin-tailed Whydah. I got a pic of the male and female.
Great photos Plan B...these guys scored big. On my ride this afternoon.
Credit: Bob D'A
My new job is about 15 minutes from Bosque del Apache...all you folks are invited and have a place to stay if want to come birding (or climbing and biking) anytime.
Let us know!