12/24/21
In the time between guiding Chuck and guiding our new guests Lisa and Pierre from Massachusetts, the first US record of Bat Falcon showed up at Santa Ana NWR during the Christmas Bird Count on the 18th! (Well, to be accurate, a visiting birder initially found it on the 8th but didn’t know what it was, and subsequent searches turned up zero…) So I gave Lisa and Pierre the option of sticking with the original plan, which was to bird Estero Llano Grande State Park, or going to Santa Ana, which would have many of the same birds plus a shot at the falcon (I had already procured cracking views and video of the bird the previous Saturday, so there was no selfish ambition in offering the change of plans J)! Being a photographer, Pierre’s preference was Estero (plus they would have time on their own to go to Santa Ana), so over we went!
I was very thankful that, for once, we weren’t socked in with fog! Once parked I suggested we circle the parking lot as Chuck and I had Lisa and Pierre’s one and only target bird, the Red-crowned Parrot, calling and flying over us the last time I was there! Sadly, while we did hear them, they remained distant and out of sight, as did the Buff-bellied Hummingbird that rattled near the car, but a skulky bird gave both of them a good enough look to pin it down as a Long-billed Thrasher!
Once on the deck I was a little alarmed as the restrooms were locked, and had forgotten that today was the Christmas federal holiday and that the facilities would probably be closed! L At any rate, we got on the boardwalk and had lovely early-morning lit Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, plus Shovelers glowing green-headed in the sun! We checked Avocet Pond for the Fulvous Whistling Ducks, but couldn’t pick any out. Heading on, a very cooperative Ladder-backed Woodpecker posed on a bare tree near the shelter at the intersection with the Wader’s Trail, and at the “T” an Eastern Phoebe posed briefly on the trail sign. At Curlew Pond we had great, sunlit looks at more whistlers, Gadwall, and Least and Pied-billed Grebes, while a sharp crack betrayed the presence of the local flyover Ringed Kingfisher (Pierre got a shot of him impersonating a torpedo J).
Pierre
then asked about the chance of seeing Avocets, so we backtracked to the main
Wader’s Trail and headed up onto the levee.
For once it wasn’t a wind tunnel up there, and one of the first jewels
we ran into was not an Avocet, but the White-tailed Kite pair! We did indeed get several Avocets, along with
Black-necked Stilts, Long-billed Dowitchers, Stilt Sandpipers, and lounging
White Pelicans that made for artistic photos against the light! An odd-looking raptor sitting in a tree
turned out to be a Harrier, once she lifted off and gave us some pertinent
field marks!
Shuffling
back down to the Wader’s Trail, we checked out Dowitcher Pond, where we had
more Gadwall (the hybrid never gave us a showing), along with Common
Gallinules, a Coot that hardly got a second look J, and a couple of
sad-sounding Soras. The reeds were
really grown up, so we ended up spooking a flock of Ring-necked Ducks before
seeing them, with some very white-faced females that had me guessing for a
minute until we could analyze our photos!
Over at Alligator Lake the night heron show didn’t disappoint (Pierre and
Lisa get Black-crowned where they are, but Yellow-crowned is a real treat). Presently another visiting birder walked up
and asked if we had seen the Pauraque, and offered to show us where it
was! Given the fact that the last ones I
had were way back in the stuff, I was very thankful to have a little help with
this one, which was behaving more “normally” for Estero birds (i.e., sitting
close to the trail and ignoring the happy tourists J)! He in turn (the man, not the Pauraque) asked
us if we had seen Green Kingfisher, which we hadn’t, so we all slowly made our
way to the big overlook, where the same guy spotted a female flying against the
opposite bank! Took a while for us all
to find her, but everyone eventually had great looks! We also had a nice male Anhinga as well as both
cormorants.
Heading
back to the deck, I was very relieved to see that the office (and the restroom J) was indeed open!! So I got us checked in and then headed to the
Tropical Zone for some more photo ops at the blind. But first we checked on “Pam in the Palm”
(one of the staked out Screech Owls); Pam wasn’t home (at least that we could
see), so we headed straight to the blind, picking up a flighty gnatcatcher on
the way. Down the road we spotted a trio
of rangers: John, Becky, and Raul, the
latter wearing a Santa hat! (I told him he needed to dye his beard white for it
to be convincing… J) After chatting a little, John said he’d
be coming back in a minute to refill the feeders (he said he was getting dirty
looks from the Kiskadees and Clay-colored Thrushes J), but even so, there
was still a lot of activity at the blind!
Despite the lack of peanut butter, the Kiskadees and thrushes were still
coming in and posing beautifully on the logs (at one point we had three thrushes
at once; pretty impressive when you realize this used to be considered a
vagrant in the Valley)! The
Orange-crowned Warblers were definitely wondering where their PB was, but the
titmice, Green Jays, and White-tipped Doves were happy with the seed on the
platform feeder.
Rangers John, Becky, and Raul (as Santa)
After
John and Doug the Volunteer returned with the vittles, the place became even
more lively: an Altamira Oriole claimed
the orange, and finally a Golden-fronted Woodpecker came in to investigate the
PB! A Curve-billed Thrasher made a brief
appearance at the seed feeder, but the Olive Sparrow only sang for us. One of the banded Green Jays came in,
identified as “Nigel” by John (we made cracks about him being named after the
evil cockatoo in the Rio movies J)! Sadly no Buff-bellied Hummer came in, although
a female Archilochus did. In the
meantime my phone was dinging off the hook with all the chatter on a special
Bat Falcon Chase What’s App group, so Pierre and Lisa were piqued enough to
want to get on it themselves so they could chase it that afternoon!
Ranger John refills the PB feeders
I was really surprised that we didn’t even hear any Chachalacas that morning (John said the Cooper’s Hawk had them scared to death L), so we headed over to the Picnic Table Feeders to see if they would come in there. Besides another Orange-crowned Warbler in the drip and on the log, the place was deserted, so after a fruitless search for Burney the Pauraque (didn’t need him, but I wanted to see if I could find the thing on my own L) and the returning Great Horned Owls, we went home by way of US 281 to avoid the freeway and see if we could pick up any raptors (nope). Pierre and Lisa did decide to hit Santa Ana after lunch, and I would love to report that they got the falcon, but it wasn’t to be – but they were looking forward to their Whooping Crane trip aboard The Skimmer! J
We
ended up with 59 species for the morning (60 if you count the Rock Pigeons on
the way home… J).
Bird list:
Black-bellied Whistling-Duck
Blue-winged
Teal
Northern
Shoveler
Gadwall
Mottled
Duck
Ring-necked
Duck
Least
Grebe
Pied-billed
Grebe
Inca
Dove
White-tipped
Dove
White-winged
Dove
Common
Pauraque
Buff-bellied
Hummingbird
Sora
Common
Gallinule
American
Coot
Black-necked
Stilt
American
Avocet
Stilt
Sandpiper
Long-billed
Dowitcher
Anhinga
Double-crested
Cormorant
Neotropic
Cormorant
American
White Pelican
Great
Blue Heron
Great
Egret
Snowy
Egret
Black-crowned
Night-Heron
Yellow-crowned
Night-Heron
White
Ibis
Turkey
Vulture
White-tailed
Kite
Northern
Harrier
Ringed
Kingfisher
Green
Kingfisher
Golden-fronted
Woodpecker
Ladder-backed
Woodpecker
Red-crowned
Parrot
Eastern
Phoebe
Great
Kiskadee
White-eyed
Vireo
Green
Jay
Black-crested
Titmouse
Blue-gray
Gnatcatcher
House
Wren
Marsh
Wren
Carolina
Wren
Curve-billed
Thrasher
Long-billed
Thrasher
Northern
Mockingbird
Clay-colored
Thrush
House
Sparrow
Olive
Sparrow
Altamira
Oriole
Red-winged
Blackbird
Great-tailed
Grackle
Orange-crowned
Warbler
Common
Yellowthroat
Northern
Cardinal
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