It was another great year in 2025 with 2 trips away from my home in Reno, NV. One of my first favorites was a flight of Gadwalls I captured at a local pond. Although it was 900, the Reno valley has the Sierras in west and the Virginia Range in the east and the sun hits the valley around 800 in early January. Also in JAN, I was lucky to get a cooperative Belted Kingfisher, a Dipper on the near banks instead of on the far side of the Truckee River, sunlit Pintails in shadowed water, and a Juniper Titmouse in the Junipers north of Lemmon Valley.
I saw my first Townsend’s Warbler soon after I was hooked on birding at my home in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Feb 2005. It was nice to return to Santa Cruz on a trip in Sep 2025 and at the Lighthouse Field I found this Townsend’s Warbler. Most warblers are hard to photograph since they are constantly on the move but this one sat still for me to get a number of great poses.
One of the reasons for the trip was hook up with the Big Basin Volunteer Trail Crew (bbvtc.org). I joined the Crew in 1996 became the co-leader in the early 2000s and now I’m the BBVTC webmaster. It was a surreal experience being the the park since this was the first time back after the 2000 SZU Lighting Fire that burned almost all of Big Basin.
On April 26th, Jeannine and I plus the pups, headed to the Oregon Coast. We stayed at a house right on the coast with beach access and about 2 km north of Ona State Beach and a few more south of Newport. I’ve always admired the Pileated Woodpecker and I saw a few during my stay in Oregon. This one I found in a small park north of Coos Bay and he landed right next to me. It was foggy so I had to lower the shutter speed to 1/500s but with the image stabilization the bird remained sharp.
The Wrentit is a year round resident along the west coast of the United State and Mexico from Baja up to Washington state as well along the western side of the Sierras. I really like their ping pong ball song and both sexes sing with the male singing faster than the female..
