Swift and Swallow Swarm, Yellow-throated Vireo, Summer Birds

Are you ready for another barrage of photos? Here goes...

One of the birding perks of being located where I am is the number of Vaux's Swifts present from April-September. This one is about to gobble its target, which you can see floating around innocently in the top left corner.

One day last spring I set out to get some Vaux's Swift photos that weren't completely horrendous for a change, which I did have some success with. I didn't have to go far...the swifts are a daily fixture at the Los Capitancillos Ponds, which are the ponds behind my backyard.

Few birds are more frustrating to photograph than swifts, but it was fun to see so many foraging down low. It turned out there was a big insect hatch in the ponds that day, and a swarm of swifts and swallows were feeding near eye level next to the trail.

My camera decided to focus on the rear bird in this photo...

...but a second later, locked on to the front bird when it suddenly banked.

Here is an eBird abundance map for Vaux's Swift in the region - I live in the single, darker purple cell that denotes more frequent observations than the rest of the area. For whatever reason, the ponds (and my yard!) is one of the most reliable places to see them in central California. It's no McNear Brickyard, but it suits me.

White-throated Swifts are much less common in the immediate area, but are generally much easier to find in the bay area; they will often nest under highway overpasses, and there is no shortage of those here.

Juvenile Anna's Hummingbirds can make for a challenging ID, as they typically lack any markings on the throat. This can render them into Costa's or Black-chinned imposters.

The faint rows of tiny spots this bird is displaying looks a lot different from the big dark blotch on the throat an adult female will show.

Black Phoebe production in the area is satisfactory.

Amazingly, while standing in the swift blizzard I managed a couple flight shots of a male Violet-green Swallow, often overlooked as one of the most crippling species in the west. Odd that Northern Rough-winged Swallows and Violet-green Facemelters occupy much of the same range and habitats, and aside from nest sites, they generally behave very similarly. Yet the males of one species are stunning, but poo-colored in the other.

That color on the rump is hard to fathom, and the only other ABA Area species that I can think of that has something close is Varied Bunting.

Tree Swallows, on the other hand, are significantly more fathomable. I saw them at the ponds very infrequently this year, and I spent an inordinate amount of time standing in the backyard checking swallow flocks for Bank Swallow/Purple Martin/Black Swift. Better luck next year with those, hopefully.

Late May and early June is when the window is open in California for spring vagues. These spring rarities are a different beast than the fall birds though...they can often be found by song (great!) and look their best (sick), but except at a handful of desert sites there are far fewer of them and they are much less chaseable. Always in a hurry to get someplace, they are. Other than the Black-and-white from the last post, I only managed to see this one other eastern bird last spring, but it was a great one.

Yellow-throated Vireo is a wonderful bird to see in California. Though not a Bird Police species, they are rare enough that most birders here will start grinding their teeth upon hearing about them. This is only the second individual I've ever seen in the state, and it was a hell of a lot more cooperative than the first.

This bird roamed around a few blocks at Moss Beach, adjacent to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. Amazingly, it stayed over a week before taking off to points unknown.

White-crowned Sparrow is one of the most abundant birds around here now, but most of these birds are migratory and leave in March and April. This is one of the year-round residents. Photographed at Half Moon Bay.

Hey! It's a Spotted Towhee! Also in Half Moon Bay.

In June we went south for Peak's wedding, which was fantastic as expected, but not good blog-fodder for nerds. I was able to get one morning of birding in with Dipper Dan. No rarity glory - finding a spring vague runt in Ventura County is like winning the lottery - but I got my 2017 Blue Grosbeaks at Canada Larga Road, where this Hooded Oriole teed up briefly. See you in March, Hooded Oriole.

A Black-headed Grosbeak did the same. We will reunite in April, Black-headed Grosbeak.

It's all about the juniper...and I do mean an actual juniper tree, not Juniper Titmouse. This is an Oak Titmouse in the backyard juniper tree. The juniper tree is crucial to what goes on here at Rancho del Bastardos - birds love it. One of these days I'm going to do another thorough yard post, and you too can share in the glory of my juniper tree. I'm also going to have to change the name of Rancho del Bastardos, as it's been pointed out to me by a couple people that my Spanish is bad and the name of my Rancho is gramatically incorrect...and you fucking bird people cannot sleep at night if you've encountered bad grammar during the day, so I will concede that something must be done.

Look at the soft complexion of this gentle titmouse. This Oak Titmouse in a juniper. Backyard birding during the summer was just slightly more surprising than watching paint dry, but we did get titmice in the yard a lot for a couple months - these days I typically only hear them calling from across the ponds.

Alright, that's enough, this was a pretty extensive post. Go birding, drinking whisky, etc.

Winter Ends Icily...Not Your Golden Guide's Swallow...Screech...Carnage at Heather Farm

It was the end of February. Winter Vague Runt season was drawing to a close, and March loomed large...March is traditionally not a particularly rewarding month in the bay area, unless one can squeeze out a juicy amount of pleasure from returning swallows and Selasphorus hummingbirds. Rare birds are few and far between, and the bulk of spring My Grunts have yet to arrive. But I feel like I go on and on about this every year so I'll leave it at that.

The end of winter (as North American Birds defines it) was ushered in by a ponytailed visit to Stafford Lake in Marin, where a Tufted Duck had stopped in. I like year birds, particularly Siberian ones. After walking around a bit and spending time with the drake Tufted, it was off to Lucchesi Park in Petaluma, a famed gull spot. I hadn't been there before so thought it could be a good time to squeeze in some gulling at the close of the season. Turns out Lucchesi Park is a pretty shitty place, but it did cough up one interesting bird for me...a bird that bore more than a passing resemblance to a first cycle Iceland Gull (kumlieni of course, one of the most hated subspecies on Earth). It wasn't a white, no-brainer of an Iceland Gull, but a very convincing bird nonetheless. More photos are here...its fate is in the hands of the Bird Police now.

At Coyote Hills in Fremont, the Glaucous Gulls that occasionally show up were predictably nowhere to be found, but a large swarm of newly arrived Tree Swallows were fun to hang out with.

Tree Swallows...are they the Blue-and-white Swallows of the north? Or are Blue-and-white Swallows the Tree Swallows of the south? These are the questions that keep no one up at night.

A gaggle of Barn Swallows tripped the eBird rarity alert. This is usually something birders brag about. Make no mistake, seeing Barn Swallows is not worth bragging about. I did enjoy getting to see so many different plumages at once though...standard model adults, intermediate birds, and a young brown and white bird that ignores the field guides.

That bird on the right is not what people think about when they think of a Barn Swallow. Note the new dark blue feathers coming in on the wings and head.

The best bird in March, for me, was not a Vague Runt or a newly-arrived My Grunt, it was a lowly permanent resident...this Western Screech-Owl. I haven't seen one of these in a long time...a long time. And never in daylight. And never at don't-give-a-fuck range, which is my preferred range for viewing birds. My luck with owls, which is traditionally terrible, has really turned around since Mexico...lifer Great Gray, lifer Saw-whet, successfully ignoring a Snowy Owl, and now my first look at WESO in years. Chuffed I am, just chuffed.

This confiding bird had been using this hollow as a roost for many weeks. I dipped on it a couple times, but on the third try the bird was right where it was supposed to be. Fantastically, I did not have to endure the company of other photographers in order to hang out with the bird. It mostly slept (shocker), but did some enthusiastic scratching and preening. If you have not seen the ears of a screech-owl before, this is what they look like. If you have not seen the underside of a screech-owl foot before, this is what that looks like.

Owls are goofy. For a moment, ignore the less-than-inspiring look on the bird's face. Note the lack of any thick horizontal marks on the breast...that is meaningless here in the bay area, but is a very good field mark to look at when in places where Whiskered Screech-Owl is found.

Occasionally a birder will make the always questionable decision of betraying an owl roost or nest to the public...which is how I got to see this bird. Questionable because birders, and especially photographers, will often show up in masses. People love owls. Attention often does not bother the birds very much, but sometimes it does, and can lead to a bird choosing a new roost site, or abandonment of a nest. What is a constant in these situations nowadays is that someone will publicly condemn whoever reported the bird, which is what happened to this screech-owl. While I think the concern is valid, it was not justified in this case...the bird's roost is right next to a paved trail, and hundreds of people walk, jog and bicycle past the bird every day.

After leaving the peaceful screech-owl, I found myself birding Heather Farm Park in Walnut Creek. I'd never been here before and didn't know what to expect. The last thing I expected was a Black Phoebe cutting loose an unearthly bellow directly above my head. Enduring such sonic power is not something the human body is built for...I thought my brain was beginning to seep out of my ears. No worries though, it was just blood.

You wouldn't think that a Black Phoebe is a bellower, but check out the width of that bill. Built to bellow.

The carnage continued after the phoebe. Here is something all you hybrid fetishists can get off on. That is not fighting. That is fucking.

Eventually things subsided when this docile Cackling Goose distracted me from the brain seepage and large fowl raping.

If you don't live in a place with many Cackling Geese, here is a crush to hold you over until next year.

While walking around the pond, I heard a foreign but familiar twitter in the distance. Could it be? Though the bird didn't call again, I listened to my instincts (Obi-Wan has taught me well) and eventually tracked down the source...a Tropical Kingbird! Not a bad bird at the end of March, especially at a relatively inland site.

TKs are a low-end Vague Runt in the region in fall and winter, but they typically don't linger this late into the spring. I wonder where the bird is now...Mexico? El Salvador? Let's say Guatemala and call it a post.

Rage, Rage Against The Dying Of The Vagrants

I don't see Long-eared Owls very often, or for very long, so it was great to finally get to spend some quality time with one, even if we were separated by a few sticks.  Birding like this typically doesn't happen in March, and as one might expect this is a bird I met a couple months ago.  Coyote Hills Regional Park, Fremont, CA.

If a birder was out to find the unusual, as birders are apt to do, March is typically not the most rewarding month in California.  It is a month when few birding heroes are made.  It is a somewhat dull span of time in which wintering birds leave, few spring migrants arrive, and rarities are very hard to come by...you know the story.  Lucas at The Birder's Conundrum described the birding situation this month as "March meh-ness", which is apt.

March is the month that California birders often come crashing down from a vagrant high that lasted for months, typically starting with weird shorebirds in July and August, peaking later in fall, and often lasting the entire winter.  The shorebird scene was poor last year, but pelagic trips brought me multiple lifers and fall on the mainland was great.  Northern California had an epic winter for vagrants, with BRAMBRING (you know the story), Rustic Bunting, Falcated Duck and Common Scoter, and out of left field we have been gifted March (!!!) Brown Shrike and Tristram's Storm-Petrel, not to mention the resident not-so-secret Common Black-Hawk and the incredibly persistent Northern Gannet that is still being seen on the Farallon Islands that has been here for years now (I'm going to see it this year, I swear).  Other birds like Slaty-backed Gull, Black Vulture, Crested Caracara and Le Conte's Sparrow were frosting on the vagrant cake for area birders.   

So while I can no longer flog the shrubbery and realistically expect to find a rare bird, I humbly await the flycatchers, vireos, warblers and orioles that will soon be upon us.  It won't be like spring in South Texas, a la 2014, but we all can't have spring in South Texas...at least, not all the time.

This bird was the most confiding owl I've ever seen, of any kind, unfazed by its attendant photographers, hordes of small, horrible children, and wankers blaring shitty music out their smartphones less than 20 feet away. I almost felt bad for the bird, but it had chosen to roost next to one of the busiest places in the park, so I chose not to feel bad for it.

I hadn't seen a Long-eared Owl in a long time, a long time, and I doubt I'll be meeting such a mellow member of its species anytime soon.

Everyone kind of likes harriers...if they weren't all over the place, birders would really like them, but familiarity breeds contempt and whatnot.  I'm always trying to get a decent harrier photo, and this bird actually obliged as the the sun began to set.  Peep those hearts on its flank! Photographed at Coyote Hills. 

Look at that half hawk, half owl face...I'm surprised that's not a more common feature in the raptor world, because harriers seem to have great success with it.  I wonder, to what extent, harriers actually use hearing in their hunting efforts. Are their ears offset at all, like an owl's? Strange ponderings on this March afternoon, before the night's beering begins.

Early this month, after dropping by the Rustic Bunting to say "hi" and get my Vague Runt fix for the day (I am a bird junkie, after all), I spent some hours lurking around the lakes at Golden Gate Park. A confiding Hooded Merganser was one of the highlights, as not only is it a charismatic bird, they're pretty damn hard to get very close to almost everywhere else in the state.  It's not like you can find them grazing on a lawn like a goddamn wigeon or eating wonderbread like a Tufted Duck.

Hoods up!  Check out the raging tertials on this bird.

I may not see another Hooded Merganser for many more months...I'm going to have to live with that. For the time being, my days spent frolicking with small, fish-eating ducks has come to an end.  No more walking around with my head in the clouds, knowing that at any time I could go someplace and see a sort dwarf merganser.  Oh well, at least baseball and Game of Thrones will be starting soon...

Mew Gull is definitely one of those birds we take for granted on the west coast...it's always disconcerting when a visiting birder tells you they are looking for a Mew Gull, but then again it makes sense.  They are only in the Lower 48 in the winter, and only on the west coast.  So for those of you who think that looking at a Mew Gull is a fabulous idea, drink it in.  Photographed at Golden Gate Park.

This bird may soon be nesting in a tree.  Can you imagine that?  A white-headed gull nesting in a tree.  That is what they do, at least sometimes...Mew Gull, just for once...let me look on you in your tree nest with my own eyes.

As long as we are looking at gulls with alluring orbital rings, check this bird out.  We don't get to see Herring Gulls in alternate plumage here on the coast very much, and I was really struck by how colorful this bird's orbital was.  Photographed at Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline, CA.

One's experience with Ridgway's Rails is difficult to predict.  It's easy to find out where they live, but seeing them is another matter...sometimes you would never know they are there, other times you can hear a dozen of them but not see a single one, and occasionally they are just out strolling around in the open with the discretion of a coot in the grips of avian cholera. Photographed at Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland, CA.

Luckily for birders, though they are fond of not being looked at, Ridgway's Rails aren't the wariest of birds and can present quality viewing/photo ops from time to time, showcasing their sturdy pink legs.  And yes, that is an antennae sticking out of the bird's back.

There's nothing quite like the golden hues of a Ridgway's Rail in the afternoon sun. It looks like...home. 

Despite their absurd abundance, I will still look at Black Phoebes and even photograph them. No one, in the scheme of things, is above liking a Black Phoebe.  It is the best phoebe, after all. Photographed in Golden Gate Park.

Fans of YANG MING will appreciate this...just when you think you are going to have a mellow day of kayaking out on the bay, FIRMAMENT ACE comes along to plow you into oblivion.  If you can't see them, the kayakers are on the waterline below where "ment" is painted on the hull. FIRMAMENT ACE was blasting their billion decibel horn at the kayakers to get the fuck out of the way, which probably added to the thrill of almost getting killed by a megaship (or, as they are called in the east bay, a hellaboat) named FIRMAMENT ACE.