I had the privilege of leading a group of birders to the Rio Vista Unit of the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex on an Altacal Audubon field trip last Saturday.
We started walking at 6:30 am. At 8:30 we stopped in a moderately dense riparian reforestation area and immediately heard a cuckoo 'cooing'. Sneaking back into the vegetation we saw the bird flush from the top of a 50' cottonwood, fly to the other side of the gravel access road into another cottonwood and again start cooing. The whole group of app. a dozen participants were able to quietly assemble under the tree and get sensational looks at the perched, calling cuckoo for about ten minutes.
It was quite birdy on the way out and we enjoyed terrific looks at lazuli buntings, blue grosbeaks and many others including a somewhat unexpected (for the valley floor in July) pacific slope flycatcher.
Two weeks ago Liam and I counted more than two dozen Bullock's orioles at Rio Vista (many family groups with juveniles), Saturday morning our group had but one, it would seem they've started migrating out. There were also fewer male black-headed grosbeaks.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment