A surprise showed up near the end of Apirl: A White Wagtail. This Wagtail is normally found in Europe and South Asia but at times they wander along the coasts of North America. Sometimes you find a bird instantly but other times they become nemesis birds: this one I found right away.
Jeannine the pups and I spent about a month in Bodega Bay, which is a windswept coastal village on California’s Sonoma Coast about 70 miles north of San Francisco. The coastline has short and long beaches with cliffs mixed in between. Go inland and you can find Redwood Forest and Chaparral woodlands mixed between rolling pasture lands.
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.
