Puerto Rico Winter Tour Y2K16: Humacao and Ceiba Country Inn

December 3: Again we woke up fighting the blear (do you blear what I blear?) that always comes with getting up hella early in tropical places with jetlag and without coffee. We birded briefly around Ceiba Country Inn before breakfast. We have realized by now that Zenaida Doves are abundant and widespread (though I did not come back with good enough photos), and a couple were poking around the driveway early in the morning.

Red-legged Thrushes are also easy to find in areas with second-growth forest. Unfortunately, most of the birds we saw were on the shy side. The one bird that sat 10 feet away in the sun glowing like a bastard chose to appear while my camera was out of reach (typical), though Dan and Adam got to crush it (also typical). If you go to PR, don't expect these birds to be hella approachable unless you blunder into a tame mall bird like we did.

Loggerhead and Gray Kingbird combo! A pair of Loggerhead Kingbirds briefly hung out near the inn, which we had not seen the day before. They remind me of a cross between an Eastern Kingbird and a large Eastern Phoebe.

After breakfast (toast AND cereal this time...luxurious!) we rolled down to bird Humacao ("Reserva Natural de Humacao" in eBird) on the east coast, a site that can be good for waterbirds and the two "eastern" hummingbirds of the island, Antillean Crested Hummingbird and Green-throated Carib. According to the birder's guide, this area was good for West Indian Whistling-Duck and Masked Duck, but eBird suggests that this has not been true in recent years - as both species are prone to wandering, Humacao may eventually become a good spot for both species again. Unsurprisingly, we did not see either species here.

The access situation is a bit odd - there is the "official" access along Rte 3, which has limited hours and is closed on weekends, but immediately east of there is some kind of park (across from the tire store) with concession stands and an information kiosk that essentially allows access to the same areas. This is where we entered (18.150726°, -65.772021°), and it worked out quite well. We did not try birding the northern part of the reserve (north of 3), where it looks like there is a lot of good habitat as well.

The birding here was interesting; the habitat looked very good, but it wasn't a particularly birdy place. It seemed like Humacao would be dripping with North American warblers, but as we noticed the previous day at Ceiba and El Yunque, there were relatively few migrant warblers (Northern Waterthrushes, redstarts, a Prairie Warbler, and some dude playing an Ovenbird tape). This would become a theme for the entire trip; we only found two sites that had more than a handful of warblers, but that would come later. The one exception to this rule of warbler scarcity was Northern Waterthrush, which were abundant in mangroves everywhere.

The first birds of note were white-shielded American Coots, which until recently were Caribbean Coots. Soon afterward, we got on two White-cheeked Pintails in one of the lagoons...what a refreshing lifer. I haven't seen a new duck in a long time...a long time.

As with practically every vegetated place in Puerto Rico, there were Bananaquits galore, though this photo was taken in El Yunque. In Puerto Rico, they seem to have a foothold in a wide array of terrestrial niches.

Puerto Rican Flycatchers were widespread and common during our trip at lowland and mid-elevation sites. This is another very Eastern Phoebeish bird from certain angles.

It was here at Hamacao that we had a run-in with our second Reluctant Lifer of the trip, in the form of Tricolored Munia (the first was Bronze Munia/Mannikin back at Ceiba). None of us were interested in going out of our way for filthy, disgusting exotics, but it was inevitable that we would be dealing with them. Much more interesting than the munias were our first visuals of Mangrove Cuckoos of the trip.

Mangrove Cuckoos are surprisingly common in Puerto Rico, and can be found in many different habitats.

I'd only seen them once before (in Costa Rica), so this was a nice bird to get to see almost every day.

Most sites were teeming with lizard or frogs or both. In the lizard department, we saw a lot of whiptails.

This big one was rocking an indigo belly patch. I'm into it. It could be a different species than the yellow-striped duder above or just an adult. It's not like I'm #7 in whiptails, cut me some slack.

We plodded through the mud, slowly accumulating trip birds. Dan got looks at the first Green-throated Carib of the trip, while Adam and I were gripped off and forced to stew in our juices. Further on down the trail we ran into a patch of Antillean Crested Hummingbirds (lifer!), one of which Adam brought in by hanging an orange bag in a tree. Brilliant.

On the way back to the car, we noticed the tree behind Adam (above) had a lot of yellow blossoms, and waiting around the tree ended up producing both Green-throated Carib (lifer!) and another Antillean Crested Hummingbird. I was very fucking relieved to see these birds, as we had missed them the previous day and they are much harder to find on the west side of the island, where we would be spending most of our time. The night before, in a dream, I thought I found a Carib...but it turned out to be some sort of weird Anna's Hummingbird hybrid...talk about a fucking nightmare. I took it to mean that we would be doomed in finding this bird, but fortunately it was probably just the fruit of all the emotional baggage I have with Anna's Hummingbirds. Anyways, it is worth mentioning that there were hardly any flowering trees at Humacao when we were there, and we found hummingbirds at all of them.

Having succeeded with multiple target birds (our eBird checklist is here), we decided to try the Fajardo Inn to see if we could put the crush on any hummingbirds there (there didn't seem to be much blooming across from the police station at the time, another suggested spot). It seemed pretty barren for a while.

This large, plain anoley thing was one of the few noteworthy finds at the hotel.

Eventually, Adam got on an Antillean Crested Hummingbird in a bottlebrush tree next to the tennis courts, where we had some mild success in getting photos of this little facemelting bastard with flash.

What a good bird.

These things are tiny and blackish with short little bills, quite different from the island's other hummingbirds. The males have amazing crests that glow blue in natural light. I dig the subtle iridescent feather tips on the underparts you can see here too.

That night would be our final night staying in Ceiba, so after we got back from farting around Fajardo we put on our rally caps and started looking for Puerto Rican Screech-Owls, our last remaining local target, which again seemed to be very quiet compared to our first night there. After doing many laps around the inn (these are very short laps) and walking all the way down the driveway and back up again, we got visuals of two Puerto Rican Screech-Owls next to the parking lot. Talk about grinding out a bird! Getting long looks at these birds turned out to be clutch, as not surprisingly we would not see any more during the trip. For those of you thinking about staying here, Ceiba Country Inn is a very good place to get the owls, and one of the guys running the place seemed surprised that we failed to see them our first night when they were constantly calling. Though it was hard to recover from this ruthless browbeating, we took advantage of our final chance and got quality looks.

Having secured all our local target birds in the nick of time, it would be time to move on in the morning. Up next, the nerds go west on a Plain Pigeon odyssey, and make the long sandwichy trash fire trek to Guanica.

Puerto Rico Winter Tour Y2K16: Ceiba Country Inn, El Yunque National Forest

Pearly-eyed Thrasher is a common and confiding bird in Puerto Rico. I'm not quite sure what to make of them though...they are like drab, friendly, fat-legged super-robins.

Puerto Rico is in the books. Birded, done. Thanks to the marvelous MAX REBO BIRDING TOURS who hired me on as a guide, in eight (8) full days of birding, we tallied 137 species. That doesn't seem like a whole lot coming from California, but to put things in perspective that makes us #18 in eBird for Puerto Rico for 2016! So we did pretty good with the time we had, because it's all about the trip list...or maybe the year birds...ok, lifers. Basically, we birded the northeast end of the island, then west to Comeria (the Plain Pigeon area), the southwest, then along the north coast west of San Juan. For those who have as much time as we did, I think it was a really good route - those focused solely on endemics should focus more on the western half of the island though (none of us had birded the Caribbean before, so there were a lot of new native birds we could get elsewhere). Several target birds were easier, or only seen on the east side of the island.

Puerto Rico...why Puerto Rico when you can go to Mexico? Belize? Jamaica? There are a great many other alternatives for a shortish winter trip, but I had some good reasons to put together a trip to PR.

- PR is part of the U.S., so travelling here is relatively easy and free of hassles. Road systems are pretty good, no passport required, English-speakers aren't rare. Tap water was awesome 2/3 places we stayed.

- PR is small. In the amount of time we had, we covered the island very well, and didn't spend a whole lot of time on the road.

- Endemics. PR has 17 endemic species at the moment, with the island's pewee a possible 18th. If you want to see these birds, Puerto Rico must be visited. All can be seen in a short amount of time.

- Caribbean birds. Caribbean species were almost totally new to us, and this is a great introduction to species that can be found on multiple islands.

- Habitat. Though PR isn't the most species-rich place, there are a lot of places to bird, though some species and subspecies are highly endangered.

- Birding on islands is fucking great.

Some general notes for those planning on visiting:

- We rented a 4x4 Jeep on the advice of Officer John Garrett. We did use four wheel drive several times, as a number of roads were very muddy with deep puddles (i.e. 306 in the Lajas Valley, the access road to Laguna Cartagena). Muddy roads may not be as much of an issue later in the dry season, but having 4x4 available with high clearance turned out to be very useful. We were there at the very beginning of the dry (EL SECO) season.

- Google Maps is only partially effective. Do not expect Google Maps to navigate you through Puerto Rico with ease. Many roads that show up in Google Maps are unmaintained tracks, or private roads that cannot be accessed. Be very wary of shortcuts the app may suggest - it works fine for the real highways though.

- Emergency vehicles often drive with their flashing lights on, even though they may not be in a rush to get anywhere. Semi trucks often are equipped with crazy, extravagant flashing lights for seemingly no reason at all. Do not let this alarm you.

- This is the first place I've visited where drivers seem to have no concern about staying in their lanes, often swerving into oncoming traffic. It is baffling. People also seem to be really into driving with their high-beams on all the time.

- Potholes and topes are everywhere.

- Knowing Spanish is helpful, obvi, but many people speak English....not everyone though.

- Gas is pretty cheap. Food can be cheap or pretty expensive, depending on your proximity to tourist areas. Cheapest lodging is airbnb (we stayed in three different places; two were airbnb apartments).

- Biting insects were mildly to moderately annoying - no-see-ums were worse than the mosquitoes, in my opinion, and the chigger scene wasn't bad. Mosquitoes were the worst in the Guanica area and in other low-lying spots, though oddly absent in some places. Obviously, Zika is a thing here, but we weren't exactly terrified of it.

- We brought a spotting scope. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age. You should bring one too.

- Mofongo is weird.

December 1: I meet up with Dipper Dan and Officer Adam Searcy and the rest of the MAX REBO BIRDING TOURS group in the baggage claim of the San Juan Airport. Between baggage claim and the rental car center, we get our lifer Zenaida Doves and Greater Antillean Grackles; both species would end up being very abundant, though not obnoxiously so. Without any bullshit, we quickly and effortlessly pick up our Jeep from Hertz, who I am now a big proponent of (Gold Club!). We immediately get lost in San Juan, and then watch a hapless Zenaida Dove get run over by a car right in front of us! Fuck! Finally we reorient and slog through traffic to get east to Ceiba, seeing some roadside Scaly-naped Pigeons and Gray Kingbirds on the way (some of the most abundant birds on the island). We arrive at Ceiba Country Inn, where we would stay the next three nights. The Inn's Puerto Rican Screech-Owls were present as advertised, but we failed to see them despite the birds calling loudly and frequently. There is a SHITLOAD of nocturnal activity around the Inn...coqui frogs, anoles, tarantulas...it was awesome. If being deafened by frogs turns you on, this is where you want to be staying. We got dinner at the Broadway in Ceiba, which was cheap and great.

We saw a staggeringly large number of coqui frogs and anoley things at Ceiba Country Inn, none of which were identified (herpers, feel free to cut loose here), but all of which were appreciated.

December 2: We woke up before dawn and started birding around the Inn. Lifers started piling up quickly...Red-legged Thrush, Pearly-eyed Thrasher, Puerto Rican Oriole, Puerto Rican Flycatcher, Puerto Rican Woodpecker. Adelaide's Warbler, Mangrove Cuckoo and Puerto Rican Lizard-Cuckoo sang from nearby. The Inn turned out to be the easiest place to see the oriole for us on the entire island. Bananaquits were also abundant, and we would see them in numbers practically everywhere we went. 

After a minimal and unimpressive continental breakfast (this place is more like a hotel than a bed and breakfast, which is how it is advertised), we headed up to El Yunque for the day. We birded the gravelled trail behind the visitor's center, and got our lifer looks at Puerto Rican Bullfinch and Puerto Rican Lizard-Cuckoo, which we watched capture a scorpion directly us. I also lifered the tody, which I had missed back at the Inn. Both the cuckoo and the bullfinch are common, but not the easiest birds to see.

Puerto Rican Orioles were common early on in the trip. They are obnoxiously nifty looking.

Lifer Puerto Rican Lizard-Cuckoo, dismantling a scorpion right above our heads.....fuck!

I love cuckoos. This bird is absolutely facemelting.

The next stop of consequence was the Yokahu Tower, where we lifered a Puerto Rican Emerald taking a bath in a leaf. After the emerald disappeared, we were suddenly besieged by lifers.

Puerto Rican Spindalis (this is the only one I would end up photographing, what a bummer)...

Puerto Rican Tanager (competing for Drabbest Tanager award)...

Green Mango (not expecting this today, especially not one so cooperative)... 

and Loggerhead Kingbird (a bird that has evoked much drool from me in the past)...what a stop!

The mango was a definite bonus bird, as they are less common on the east side of the island, and most visiting birders only seem to get them in Maricao. Some other stops in the park weren't particularly noteworthy on the bird front, but walking the Las Minas trails were very productive. Immediately after getting the first Black-throated Blue Warbler of the trip, it started dumping rain so we took cover in one of the great many rain shelters present (really, there are a lot). The birding here was excellent, even though we spent a significant amount of time birding from rain shelters.

The lush forest at Las Minas soaks up the rain.

Nerds avoid soaking up the rain.

Scaly-naped Pigeons are very appealing.

Puerto Rican Bullfinches are common, thankfully. I was really taken by them.

As great as the bullfinches are, it's hard to match the legendary Puerto Rican Tody.

Northern and Louisiana Waterthrushes (above) foraged in the creek (and in a rain shelter) at Las Minas. Check that raging supercilium! This was the only LOWA we would find in PR.

Lots of awesome orchids were blooming in El Yunque...but this is an iris I misidentified as an orchid. Anyways, don't you love the tropics?

We visited El Yunque on a Friday, to avoid the weekend crowds, which I would recommend. The Big Trees parking lot was full but otherwise the people sitch was pretty manageable. We did not try for the Elfin in El Yunque, opting instead to look for it at Maricao ("Elfin-woods Warbler siempre en Maricao" - random local photographer we met). After Las Minas, we randomly ended up in Fajardo, hoping to blunder into some trip birds at accessible beaches. And blunder we did! We got our only Sandwich Terns of the trip, as well as the first Brown Boobies, which seemed to be fairly common.

Pelicans, Sandwich and Royal Terns roost at sunset, while frigatebirds wheeled overhead. Life is better with frigatebirds wheeling overhead. We grabbed dinner at an overpriced place a couple blocks away, but I have no regrets about putting away those damn fine shrimp.

We put these Smooth-billed Anis to bed. We would see many more during the trip.

Back at Ceiba Country Inn, we drank much Medalla and failed again to see the screech-owls, which were very quiet that night. This may have been because a nearby neighbor was blasting some of the shittiest music I've heard in my life...and believe me, these ears are no stranger to shit.

Ugh, so many lifers in one day...the mind reels...More Puerto Rico coverage coming soon!

The Five Mile Challenge

Like Jesus once did, Flycatcher Jen's blog has arisen from the dead to make the world a better, more Christian place. Well maybe that isn't entirely true, but I Used To Hate Birds is back, and it makes me feel a lot better about things. I was reading one of her new posts the other day and she mentioned an idea that struck a chord with me...she is starting to track birds she has seen within a 5 mile radius of her house in PDX. Her 5 mile list is quite impressive, definitely larger than mine, and features a number of Vague Runts. My 5 mile list, if I were to try to put it together, is not something I would relish in comparison. I just moved to my new place a few months ago, and my old patch (Middle Harbor Shoreline Park in Oakland) is not even in my new circle...what horeseshit. I don't even have any hotspots I check regularly in my new 5 miler.  Good places like Ferry Point, Lake Merritt and Arrowhead Marsh are just out of reach...but I do have the Emeryville Marina, the Albany Bulb, and Tilden Park...it could be much, much worse.

But I digress. I am not about to start a 5 mile list...but how about doing a 5 mile Big Day? It's pretty much a lazy Big Day, which sounds extremely appealing. I'm down to bird more locally (I may not have a choice soon!) and it would be cool to actually check out a couple new spots. So, coming this January, Flycatcher Jen, This Machine Nate (in Austin) and myself will challenge one another to see who can bag the highest number of species within 5 miles of where they live in 24 hours. Simple. We are aiming to all do it the same day in order to make it more suspenseful, but rescheduling is allowed if someone is totally rained out.

What does the winner get? Bird books. I need more bird books, and if I win, each loser will buy me one. This is nerdy as fuck, yes, but at what point have I claimed I wasn't a nerd?  The brand new Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Northern Central America would be an awesome pickup, and something like this would be cool too. Basically, FJ and Nate losing will directly result in me gaining more knowledge and sacred bragging rights, and that's just too good to pass up. Bring it on goddammit!

Decemberance

2010. After ditching a camera for a great many years, by December of 2010 I was back into photography again and always birded with a camera on hand. At the time, that put me in the minority of birders...the boom in bird photography since then wasn't something I expected. This male Allen's Hummingbird had taken up residence in the backyard of where I grew up, in Ventura, CA, and is still the best place I know of see Allen's at point-blank crushing range.

December...we're almost there. The year is almost over, and it's been a doozy. It all started being sick to death in Oakland and doing no partying whatsoever on New Year's Eve for the second year in a row (SHAME), dragging my sick ass to Lake Merritt on January 1 to get some year birds, then heading down to Mexico for a fucking ace birding trip that will go down in the history books. Now, on the other end of the year, I live in a different city, preparing myself to become a father next month...holy shit! Is this really happening? This was not another boring year, by any stretch of the imagination.

Before I grab fatherhood by the balls though, I have one last trip to get out of my system...tonight I will be on my way to a DADCHELOR PARTY birding trip to the one part of the country where I could get the most lifers, which just happens to be in...Puerto Rico! I've never been to any of the Caribbean islands before, so this is a whole new part of the world for me.

So nerds, unfortunately I will be busy birding so won't be posting for a couple weeks. To tide you over, I thought I would revisit some birds from previous Decembers that may have not gotten the attention they deserve recently. I will be back soon with many reviews of all the Puerto Rican strip clubs and quality of cocai...oops hahahaha by that I mean a crop of crushed lifers. Thanks Billy for letting me loose to look at a shitload of birds one more time before (human) nesting season arrives!

2011. By this time I had finally settled on a lens I was happy with (the underperforming Sigma I had purchased recently was stolen by a Mexican cartel, which turned out to be kind of a favor because I went out and got a better lens). Shooting birds like American Pipits was hella more fun than it used to be. Sacramento NWR, CA. 

2012. By now I had quite a few ABA Area and Mexican birds under my belt so it was time to go to that special place where all birders must visit eventually, Costa Rica. This Gray-capped Flycatcher was one of many ridiculous lifers we got at Hotel Gavilan (near La Selva), where we stayed a few nights. I definitely recommend staying there...there is geri birding, after all.

Sarapiqui Eco-Observatory (not sure if the name has changed since then) has an awesome setup for geri birding and overall good birding on the property...I'm sure we would have seen more if it hadn't been raining almost the entire time. The $20 birding/crushing fee did seem ultimately worth it. This Bronze-tailed Plumeleteer was a clutch bird to see up close.

La Selva and birding with Haynor was fucking great. This low-flying King Vulture, a bird I'd always drooled over, was an immense lifer. I definitely want to go back and rebird the shit out of that place.

La Cinchona has some of the best geri birding I've ever experienced. Prong-billed Barbets await.

2013. I went back up to Humboldt County to see the Little Bunting (great success, very nice). Will Humboldt or Del Norte be home to another MEGUH this winter? Highly likely. But if that doesn't happen, just remember Bonaparte's Gulls are fucking cool. Photographed at Arcata Marsh.

2014. California is blessed with a pleasant number of Eurasian Wigeon during the winter months, and every now and then they turn up someplace where they are practically fearless. This drake was getting all pastoral at a small park in Thousand Oaks.

That winter Don Mastwell and I had a sector for the Salton Sea (south end) CBC. We totally failed in taking care of our main responsibility (getting Least Bittern), but at least there were hella Yuma Ridgway's Rails. Fortunately we bagged a Horned Grebe, the only one of the count.

Considering the ridiculous number of rarities that had been seen in the area over past winters, the Salton Sea vague runt situation at the time of the CBC was pretty dull. A Varied Thrush was a great county bird though, and as usual there were Vermilion Flycatchers around. Vermilion Flycatchers are synonymous with good birding if you ask me, and I am the Global Birder Ranking System's #7 U.S. birder, in case you didn't know...so take that to heart.

LeConte's Sparrow is a deeply underappreciated bird. This skulker is intricately patterned and make my eyes bulge painfully and my tongue engorge whenever I see one. Talk about an eye-feast. This easygoing bird wintered at Abbott's Lagoon in Marin County and didn't put much effort into staying hidden, thankfully.

California is arguably the best place in the world for sapsuckery; I haven't done it myself, but there are birders who have achieved the vaunted SAPSUCKER SLAM, getting all four species in the same day....the mind reels. This is the weirdest sapsucker I have ever seen, a reported Red-naped near Inverness Park in Marin County that ostensibly doesn't have any blatant hybrid traits (Red-breasted X Red-naped are regular in the state) but it bizarrely lacks any white behind the eye and has an unusually dark breast. Hypermelanistic?

2015. I pulled into Fields Landing, Humboldt County, during a rainstorm to find a flock of Red Knots feeding in a puddle next to the parking lot. The knots must have been starving because I parked next to them and crushed them with reckless abandon and total disregard to all the knot souls I was stealing. It was brilliant. 

Thanks for jumping into the BB&B time machine today! If all goes well, soon there will be posts littered with Antillean Crested Hummingbirds and Red-legged Thrushes.

The Shit and The Sand-Plover

What's that sound? Can you hear it? Maybe not, but I can smell it...the shitwinds are blowing, and you can bet that this is just the calm before the shitphoon that is about blow ashore...

We at BB&B are not the type of people to be optimistic about the next four (or eight) shitty years, not in the slightest. We are not the type of people to ask our brothers and sisters to reach out across the aisles of shit, to attempt handshakes that will just cover your hands in shit. We are far too realistic. For birds, the environment, and yes people too, the waves of shit are now towering above our heads, and when they break there will be nowhere to run. Drowning in shit is a frightening and very real possibility. The last Republican administration was a hellish thing to experience (on environmental and a great many other fronts), but remember this...even George W. Bush admitted that climate change was real, and who knows how things would have played out if his wife wasn't a birdwatcher! It's no coincidence that Papahānaumokuākea National Monument was created after Laura Bush visited Midway Atoll.

That said, I'm already sick of the blame game, the soapboxes, the half truths, the clickbait...especially the clickbait. We may be hanging our heads, but we are not the type of people to beat a dead shithorse. We will not drag this out any more today, just as we seem to be shaking off the great national hangover. But make no mistake...the shitreaper is coming, and we should all be very, very afraid. - Felonious Jive

Fall is winding down now...many of the summer's birds are already making themselves cozy on their wintering grounds, and we await for the winter's crop of waterfowl/raptors/gulls/rarities (???) to pile in. But the bay area's October bore one last juicy piece of fruit for me...LESSER SAND-PLOVER. After Matt Lau (birding hero) found and babysat the bird for several days, a small nerdsquadron was dispatched to make contact with the wayward Russian. Though a great many struggling birders had complained about the long, sandy walk out to the bird, we made a effortless beeline straight from the RCA Patch, complete with the blessing of the National Park Service as we were caught jumping the gate. Navigating our way through the dunes, we quickly found Matt Lau and a contingent of nerds, who were already on the bird.

I hadn't seen a Lesser Sand-Plover in a long time...a long time. Over 20 years in fact (thanks Don!). Now that I think about it, there is no other bird species I've seen before that I'd gone so long without seeing again. The plover did very plovery things, actively feeding almost the whole time we were there, which we appreciated considering that it does register pretty high on the drab scale.

Other birders really crushed the shit out of the bird on previous days, but we were in a foggy soup the whole time and wanted to avoid pushing around the Snowy Plovers it was with, so I'm happy with the mediocre images I got. Typically, one clueless birder coming towards us walked straight through the Snowy Plover flock without pause while we were waving our hands and shouting "no!" at him...ugh. Unbelievable. Not that a disturbance like that is the end of the world, but it's poor form to say the least.

Not that you can tell from these photos, but the thing that really struck me about this bird was how big it was...it was much, much bigger than its Snowy Plover buddies, and really stood out. It was also not particularly cute, which is unusual for smaller plover species. The bird I saw previously seemed very small at the time (but it was completely alone) and was also as cute as goddamn button, but it was an obvious juvenile. I'm not sure what the consensus is on the age of this bird. At any rate, I'd been hoping to reconnect with this species for a great many years, and was stoked to do it in a county I love birding in. Thanks again Matt!

There was also a pair of Red Phalaropes feeding on the open beach, which is super weird. There have been hordes of them inshore this year though, so it wasn't totally shocking.

While this has been a great fall for birding, it has not been so for photography, for some reason. Here are some American White Pelicans that helped buck the trend at Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge.

White pelicans rank very high on the majestic scale, and I'm happy to have them around.

Not all monarchs migrate to Mexico; California has many important wintering sites as well. As with many birds, both the western and eastern monarch populations have experienced precipitous declines in the last 20 years. That's some shit. Photographed at Point Reyes, CA.

My last trip out to Point Reyes with Don Francisco was solid (hello golden-plovers, 112 species on the day) but did not produce anything interesting in the vague runt traps. The resident Great Horned Owls at Mendoza that roost above the cattle guard could give a fuck, but then again they don't seem to give a fuck about anything except sleeping.

I went out to Marin again last weekend to check out the new tidal marsh at Hamilton Field for the first time...damn, that place is good! Much vague runt potential there, and an impressive example of what restoration can do around these parts (it used to be an airfield). I stopped at the Las Gallinas Ponds on the way back, and had nothing unusual save for a brown blackbird with a yellow eye that I could not will into being a Rusty. This immature Red-tailed Hawk let me walk right under it though, so I gave it a quick crush.

Gadwalls...what would we do without Gadwalls? It is a necessary duck. Mark my words...the day Gadwalls go extinct will be the day human beings go extinct.

The bay area offers a great many opportunities to observe and photograph waterfowl at close range, but Cinnamon Teal are not particularly confiding, especially now that the Radio Road ponds are going to be out of commission. This hen didn't seem to know that though. She had a very drab, almost featureless facial pattern typical of the species.

That's all the time we have today. The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive would like to thank the phenomenal Trailer Park Boys for his inspiration today. Until the next post, I highly recommend you hang up your keyboard commando boots and go birding...

Or drinking. That helps too.