Colusa Wildlife Refuge

On Monday we drove to Yuba City (an hour away) where I had been able to schedule a COVID vaccine appointment at the CVS pharmacy. We made the most of the day be combining the appointment with a visit to the Colusa National Wildlife Refuge. I have driven past the wildlife refuges along I-5 for years but have never stopped and now I want to make sure that we go visit all of them. These can be mini-road-trips in a year when we may not be able to take a real road trip.

I wish I’d had my camera nearby for the whole drive. I think we passed up a lot of interesting views, but I had my camera ready when we drove past this barn.

There are five refuges in the Sacramento National Wildife Refuge system (dark green on this map) and there is also a state refuge which is not shown here. Maybe we’ll make it to another when we go back to CVS for our second vaccination.

The first bird we saw was a Greater White-fronted Goose.

There is a 3-mile auto tour and a short walking trail. We started with the walk, some of which was blocked off.

You aren’t supposed to get out of the car on the auto tour route, but there is a parking lot and observation platform at the beginning of it. There seemed to be a greater density of birds at this location than later on.

I had to do most of my bird ID after I got home and could look at my photos with my bird books in hand. Feel free to correct my IDs if they are wrong.

Snow Goose or Ross’ Goose? We couldn’t decide if the brownish face on many of the white geese was the natural coloring or staining from poking around in the mud. But one of my bird books shows that tan face on the Snow Goose photo.

On the other hand the book described the Ross’ Goose with a smaller pink bill. Is that what I see here?

It’s a challenge to identify birds when this is the view.

Or this view.

I figured out that the last one was a Northern Pintail after I identified the bird in this photo.

Northern Shoveler.

Greater White-fronted Goose.

American Coot.

I had a hard time matching this one up to what is in my books. The curved bill and coloring have me leaning toward the White-face Ibis, but I don’t see a white face. Maybe some other Ibis?

Great Blue Heron.

I was surprised to see the crowd of birds roosting.

I finally figured out that they are Black-crowned Night Herons. The description in the books fit as does the statement that they roost in trees during the day.

I look forward to getting the second vaccine for more than one reason. Hopefully we can fit in a trip to another refuge before we start to feel any disagreeable side effects from the vaccine.

Birdwatching in Fairfield

One of these days I’ll write a blog post about one of the Christmas gifts from my family—a calendar with 365 days of “National (fill in the blank) Day”. Then they filled in chosen days to do something with me. For instance my son and DIL came over to watch a movie for National Science Fiction Day. Tuesday was, according to this calendar, National Bird Day. My brother got a new lens for his camera so he could get a better view of his local birds and he has been photographing and identifying birds in his neighborhood. I have been very impressed with his photos because I don’t feel as though I have been very successful at bird photos. He invited me to go on a birdwatching walk with him.

I know…this isn’t a bird. But it was the first wildlife I saw when we walked out the gate of Dave’s backyard. Dave’s house and yard back up to a seasonal creek and there are paths along both sides. At times there have been families of beavers living in the creek and he sees a lot of birds there.

I hate to admit how poor my bird ID skills are, but this jaunt made me decide I can do better. I think when I’m out walking here with my dogs I haven’t been focused well enough to pay attention to the differences in all the little birds that live in the area. And many times it’s easier to ID the bird by looking at photos that I can enlarge on my computer than be trying to see the detail in real life.

I do know that this is a dove—a mourning dove I think.

This one is easy—red-winged blackbird.

We started out in the neighborhood but eventually followed the creek out of town.

These oak galls caught my eye. Stationary objects are easier to photograph than moving birds.

Woodpecker. Hairy or Downy? Dave told me which one, but now I don’t remember.

I noticed several small painted wood blocks in random places. Dave said that he doesn’t know who puts them up but they are changed occasionally.

More interesting and easy-to-photograph objects.

At the edge of town.

I just looked up the history of the area known as Cement Hill. According to an article in the local newspaper:

“The Pacific Portland Cement Co. from 1902 to 1927 quarried the rock and made cement…The castle-like remains in the hills served as the foundation of the rock crusher, with the wooden building and metal equipment now long gone. A rail system transported the rock. At one point, more than 500 workers earned their living in these hills.”

Western meadowlark.

There isn’t much blooming right now, but I love how this Lesser Goldfinch (I think) matches the plants where he is perched.

White-crowned sparrow.

We got to the edge of town and then took a path up into the hills. They are finally getting green after our meager amount of late rainfall. However, these hills burned in October and it is sad to see how little soil cover there is. Lots of bare ground between the little bit of grass sprouting.

Dave’s dog, Daisy was a well-behaved companion on this trek.

We had a great view of Lagoon Valley to the east…

…and Fairfield and the hills to the west and north.

We could see Mt. Diablo, where we hiked last month, to the southwest although I had to tweak this photo to get it to stand out behind the clouds.

Another view east.

Cedar waxwing.

You may have to look closely but there are two Anna’s hummingbirds in this photo. It was one of the few shrubs with flowers (a few flowers) and one of the hummingbirds made repeated dive-bombing approaches, with a call I can only describe as a screech that I never expected to hear from a hummingbird. He’d drop down and then rise straight up as if he was a drone. Very cool to watch and a nice bird to end the day.

Dave kept track of the number of species we saw and he counted 25!