Another Monday Birdwatching Post


Saturday was another day of birdwatching for Libby and me. This time we went to Carbon Canyon Regional Park for what turned out to be a short visit. But in the hour and a half that we birded, we saw 21 species, most of which were exciting. The bird of the day you can see above.

Carbon Canyon is your typical California chapparral and scrub regional park. It also advertises the largest Coastal Redwood grove in Southern California. We never made it to the grove, though. There were signs saying that the nature trail was washed out and closed. With a little more time, I think we may have made it. And in a little more time, we probably would have picked up a bunch more birds! This was a really fun trip because it was a return to the Southern California coastal hills inland kind of birds. Generally we've been visiting water-side locations lately. It's nice to see a spotted towhee again. With cooler weather coming, this kind of trip will be more feasible.

I guess it's about time to go back to Tucker!

There's a small lake in the park, but the best birding we found was on the edge of the park. There's a hill that slopes up from the creek that was full of fun birds. It also was full of the sounds of birds singing (mystery birds: we never actually saw them, though they were probably a kind of wren).

We saw:

1. red-tailed hawk (there was a pair of them hanging around the side of this hill, we even saw one land on a tree there)
2. cooper's hawk (as we walked through a little nature trail, it burst out of the top of some conifers directly overhead.
3. american kestrel
4. american coot
5. mallard
6. california gull
7. belted kingfisher (see the picture above: bird of the day)
8. yellow rumped warblers (a lot of these!)
9. western blue bird
10. american robin
11. western scrub jay
12. american crow
13. western wood peewee
14. black phoebe
15. california towhee
16. spotted towhee
17. downey woodpecker (we said to each other, it would be nice to see a woodpecker, we haven't seen one since we were in Mammoth. And so we walked a little way and there it was. And I said, "remember the hairy woodpecker we saw by the cabin?" And Libby did.)
18. black-chinned hummingbird
19. Anna's hummingbird
20. lesser goldfinch
21. rock pigeon
22. mourning dove
23. common raven
24. house finch
25. Bushtits

This trip was exciting just because we hadn't seen these birds for awhile, and it's nice to get reaquained to old favorites. Plus, you don't see a western wood pee wee or a black-chinned hummingbird every day. And we got such good close looks at the Cooper's and the Red-tailed hawks! We even got to hear the red-tails calling as they came swooping down to the hillside.

The bird of the day came while we were trying to get a look at some female Anna's in some flowering trees by the lake shore. I was thinking that there might be some roufous hummingbirds showing up soon as the migration season wears on, and as I was trying to get a closer look, I turned toward the lake in time to see a large bird with white patches under its wing swooping down from a tree near the near shore. As it dropped it let out a trilling noise, and I said, "Libby, a kingfisher!" And so we both got a really good look at it. It flew across the lake from us, and then over again to another side, so we got to watch it for awhile.

That's a first in Southern California for me! And a first for Libby at all!