Viewing entries tagged
birds
Last Sunday J and I went on an 11 hour tour and the seas did get rough. We joined Debi Shearwater on a Shearwater Journeys pelagic trip around Half Moon Bay. The trip departed at 7am out of Pillar Point Harbor where we first checked out the jetties for shorebirds. Since the sun had just risen, there was a warmth to the light giving the white Elegant Terns an orange glow.
Although we divide time into nice equal parts like the seasons where June 21 is the first day of summer. We also know that birds breed in spring. Well its not that simple.
Pescadero State Beach (meaning "the place to fish" in Spanish) is located along the coastal Highway 1 in San Mateo County between Ano Nuevo State Park (elephant seal breeding grounds) and Half Moon Bay, CA. The beach is about a mile long with sandy coves, rocky cliffs, tide pools, and the Pescadero Marsh Natural Preserve is just inland. My first stop was to the rocky parts of the beach and when I looked out I saw shorebirds on the rocks but there was something different: a Ruddy Turnstone.
There are about 80 species of wrens in 20 genera worldwide. Wrens are mainly a New World Family, distributed from Alaska and Canada to southern Argentina, with most in the Neotropics. There are 10 wren species in North America, which brings me to the featured photo: the Canyon Wren.
On the first day of March, J, our two dogs Kodi and Kaja, and I headed out to the 1,627 acre Santa Teresa County Park located in the Santa Teresa Hills ten miles south of downtown San Jose in Santa Clara County, CA. This park is about 45 minutes from my home in the Santa Cruz mountains and on this early spring day (I know spring was a couple weeks away but this is California) the park was green with the wildflowers beginning to bloom.
