It's hard for me to believe that it's been more than a week since my last blog post. You know how the adage goes: "Time flies when you're... not doing anything."
First up is a relatively tame MERLIN on Staten Island in San Joaquin County:
For some reason, this species has been decidedly tricky for me to find in Sacramento County this year; I have only one sighting so far.
This past weekend we spent a few hours in Solano County before the rain hit. We stumbled into a flock of TRICOLORED BLACKBIRDS numbering ~400 birds. Here are a few shots:
It's interesting how the closed wing of a perched TRBL shows very little color peeking out on the shoulder; the abundant RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS almost always show more. Either way, I especially like this picture of a spread-winged TRICOLORED:
Moving up on the "Stank-o-Meter", the nearby dump attracts a multitude of gulls to sift through. Our best find was this first-cycle GLAUCOUS GULL (you can see it peeking out from behind the HERRING GULL in front):
Although this particular picture doesn't show it, the bird was very pale with completely pure white wingtips as one would expect on Glaucous Gull.
That's all for now but I promise to all three of you that I'll post again in the next few days....
