A Good Day

Today was a really wonderful day. It rained almost all morning, though only very lightly, and it had rained half of the night. I opened the windows this morning to that glorious fresh rain-smell, and Libby and I had soup and hot chocolate for lunch (a little optimistic, perhaps). We got our little apartment cleaned, and so that's alright.

The afternoon we'd planned to go birding. We wanted to go back to the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary I had visited last week, but, then, someone posted about seeing a couple of interesting warblers at Huntington Central Park, so we decided to visit both places. As they're both near the 405, that turned out to be very feasible.

Huntington Central Park was very wet, and quite birdy. There were big flocks of Yellow-rumped Warblers everywhere. There were also a large number of Townsend's Warblers, which are really quite beautiful. I'll put a full list at the bottom. We only found one of the two Eastern warblers reported: a single beautiful male American Redstart. This was the second time we've seen one, the other time was at the Salton Sea, but it was the first time Libby got a really good look at one (a satisfying view), and I was very happy to see one again, also.

As we were walking around trying for better views of the Redstart, I noticed a Kingbird, and decided to check it out, on the principle that any Kingbird in coastal California in the Fall may, very rarely, be a Tropical Kingbird heading dreadfully off course. This was one of those very rare situations! Libby and I had seen Tropical Kingbirds before in Arizona, and we worked together on each field mark indicating its species. It had a large, long bill, a dark mask, the yellow on the chest came up to the white throat patch, without the intermediate gray line of a Cassin's or Western Kingbird, and the tail was notched (though not so deeply as the ones we saw in Arizona - I'm not sure what that means, maybe it's a hybrid, but it's tail was quite worn, so that might also explain it). It finally called, and it had a perfect Tropical Kingbird voice. Awesome! This was the first time Libby and I had found a previously unreported rare bird together on one of our trips.

We soon headed over to San Joaquin, where we found both the Pectoral Sandpiper and Sora that I had seen the week before. These were both lifers for Libby, and so that helped keep our lists on par with each other. Other highlights were: a couple of White-faced Ibis. Oh, and three Bobcats that were quite tame and allowed us to admire them for a long time. I'll post a list for that location, too.

Huntington Central Park:

American Crow
Red-tailed Hawk
Common Yellowthroat
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Townsend's Warbler
American Redstart!
Orange-crowned Warbler
House Wren
Song Sparrow
House Finch
Lesser Goldfinch
Mallard
Mourning Dove
American Robin
Bushtit
Wrentit
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Hutton's Vireo
Western Wood Pewee
Black Phoebe
Downey Woodpecker
Tropical Kingbird!

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San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary:

Clark's Grebe
Eared Grebe
Pied-billed Grebe
Double-crested Cormorant
American White Pelican
Pectoral Sandpiper (a lifer for Libby)
Long-billed Dowitcher
Black-necked Stilt
American Avocet
Kildeer
Black-bellied Plover
White-faced Ibis
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Black-crowned Night Heron
American Coot
Common Moorhen
Sora (a lifer for Libby)
Green-winged Teal
Cinnamon Teal
Mallard
Gadwall
Northern Shoveler
Ruddy Duck
Forster's Tern
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
Northern Harrier
Red-tailed Hawk
American Kestrel
American Crow
Marsh Wren
Common Yellowthroat
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Yellow-breasted Chat
Song Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow

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