Manuela The Mandarin, Stowed Sparrows, Winter Gulling

Damn...no more Mexico posts...I guess I could finish off posting about the Costa Rica trip, but that would be too, um, prudent. I think I'll get caught up on winter birding instead.

After Mexico, Don Francisco and I birded for a few days around the bay, racking up year birds left and right. Don Francisco found this Greater White-fronted Goose at Golden Gate Park, which is always a nice bird to see in San Francisco. If Don Francisco ever finds a bird rare enough, I'm just going to start calling him San Francisco, which will thoroughly confuse everyone.

Golden-crowned Sparrows are supremely crushable at Stow Lake, and this bird got smashed pretty badly. I think I might have hurt it.

Fox Sparrows are usually not as confiding as crowned sparrows and are more interesting to look at, so I could not help but steal the (apparently grainy) soul of this bird.

This is a Sooty Fox Sparrow, the common form in northern California. Will the large and confusing pile of subspecies that comprise Fox Sparrow ever get split? I'm going to go on record here with a "no".

I will even take junco pictures still. I am a man of all birds.

See...I will even photograph a non-countable exotic! How embarrassing! How low can you go? I'm really scraping the bottom of the birding barrel here. Anyways, this is the same Mandarin Duck that has been at Stow Lake for over a year now. She still occasionally gets identified as a Wood Duck...but hey, there are worse mistakes one can make. She is not as popular as "Manny The Mandarin" and does not have her own Facebook page, which upsets her, but the world of birding is better for it.

If a Great Egret wants to sit a few feet away for a quick crush sesh, then I will oblige it. They're still pretty impressive birds to be up close to.

After dropping off Don Francisco, I went back out to the Richmond herring run to see if I could hang out with the Slaty-backed Gull some more. As expected, there were many Mew (left) and Thayer's (right) Gulls gorging themselves on herring roe.

This first-cycle Thayer's was a good-looking bird, already acquiring a lot of pink in the bill.

I refound the young Glaucous X Glaucous-winged Gull that we had seen earlier in the week. Not a bad looking bird for a hybrid gull.

The best find of the day was this adult Glaucous-winged X Glaucous Gull...just look at all the white on the primary tips....frosty! I had never seen an adult of this hybrid before, so I had some mild stoke going with this bird. Come to think of it, I've still never seen an adult Glaucous Gull...its a sad state of affairs.

Compare the hybrid's primary pattern with the Glaucous-winged Gull's primaries conveniently poking out from the left side of the frame.

Glaucous-winged X Glaucous Gull with a typical Glaucous-winged Gull below. I assume adult GWGU X GLGU primarily winter north of California, which is definitely how GLGU arrange themselves.

It's not unusual to find banded Western Gulls in the bay area, as they have been banded on the Farallon Islands for many years.

This Western Gull, silver-winged, leucistic Western Gull was a cool bird to see, and possibly the best Western Gull I've ever laid eyes on.

It's not unusual to see thousands of Mew Gulls at herring runs. Patches of the bay can be open, uninhabited water one minute and a seething froth of Mew Gulls the next.

I did not get to do as much gulling last winter as planned, and my multiple-year streak of not seeing any Glaucous Gulls continues. I'll miss these vulgar displays of Larus, but not being confronted with numerous birds (often at once) that are better left unidentified. No point in stringing, is there?

The Rock Wren Is Not As Forgiving As I Am

We are absolutely buried in December now. You may be excited by Christmas Bird Counts (I know The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive is), but I'm pretty focused on the new Star Wars. Anyways, nothing says "Happy Holidays!" like HERMIT THRUSH ACTION. This fog-bound bird was holding down the Fish Docks out at Point Reyes, where I managed to see a number of quite uncommon birds, but not many rare birds this fall. Railer. Oh well, I can always look back on the last Connecticut Warbler with fondness and be grateful that I wasn't there for The Murrelet Incident.

In northern California, White-throated Sparrows are near the bottom of the Eastern Vagrant Totem Pole...but if they are on the pole, it's a good bird! This confiding individual was recklessly hopping around on the path at the Fish Docks, in close proximity to the raging HERMIT THRUSH ACTION.

This is one of those birds that I've somehow not managed to photograph properly before...this bird on the path is on the right path to a proper photo, I reckon. It is a pleasureable sparrow to look at, methinks, good ol' Sam Peabody, you know what I'm saying? Perhaps the next field guide will have a section on pleasure sparrows.

Rock Wrens are always holding down the Outer Point, which is a very good thing. I consider them to be the most fearless wren...you might say that their overconfidence is their weakness, but your faith in your friends is yours.

See what I did there?

Here is the Rock Wren rendering itself into some sort of highly amicable modern art sculpture, apparently melding tail and wing into a protective wren-shell.

However, the wren-shell has a weakness. It's a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A precise hit will start a reaction which should destroy the...wren-shell.

How about there? Did you see what I did there?

Getting sick of fogbound, brown bird pictures? Fine, here is a fogbound haggard coyote. Be glad you are not that coyote.

Look at the bill length on this Tricolored Blackbird....it might as well be a Tricolored Heron. Actually, I can't even tell which one of those species this bird is. Birding is hard. Photographed at Ardenwood Farm, Fremont.

I've mentioned it before, but since ya'll probably don't read every single BB&B post (how very sane of you), it bears discussing again...Tricolored Blackbirds don't really match field guides very well during the fall. With the buffy epaulet edging, this may look like a typical Red-winged Blackbird at first glance, but this is actually typical of Tricolored Blackbird in the fall (see the first TRBL photo as well). That buff color will fade to white over time, and that's when these birds look like they've been consulting field guides for how they appear.

Another thing to keep in mind is that "typical" Red-winged Blackbirds are not very common in the bay area, we mostly have Bicolored Blackbirds, which only have a red patch on the wing.

Speaking of patchness, I finally found a rare bird at my patch! This absurdly late Common Tern (seen November 8) was a surprise a few minutes from my house, and is likely the latest I've ever seen of its kind in the country. Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, Oakland, CA.

Not surprising at all was this Long-billed Curlew. Curlews are great birds...not in terms of rarity, just in general. I think it is important to have curlews lurking at one's patch, laying waste to what lies beneath the surface of the mud.

I don't like to do this...really, I don't. I'm not one to fetishize obviously escaped birds, but one will nonetheless be portrayed here...this is the first free-flying Mandarin Duck I've ever seen. Granted, it probably doesn't fly very much (it has been in Golden Gate Park for a very long time now), but it could leave if it wanted. It does a good impression of a female Wood Duck, with a different bill color of course.

This is a plover. A plover of snow. I hadn't been to Crissy Field (San Francisco) in years, so I did what I thought was best and lurked over there a few weeks ago. It was hell of peopley, shocker. Fortunately there were four Snowy Plovers in the designated Snowy Plover area. This one had more colorful legs than the others. Turns out I was the one who banded it.

Naw, just kidding, it was someone else. All the ones I've banded were down San Diego way...it would be weird if one of them turned up this far north. Anyways, a small flock of Snowy Plovers is here at Crissy on the regular, though they don't breed. These pleasant beach loafers/sand nuggets can be found along Ocean Beach as well, which (surprise surprise) is also peopley.

Brown Pelicans are nice to look at. I have nothing more to say, except I have not seen the new Star Wars yet so for the love of all that is Holy and Right in the world, don't leave a spoiler in the comments. Photographed at Crissy Field.