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santa cruz
It's always exciting to find a rare visitor to your area but when you also get the opportunity to observe behavioral interactions the encounter becomes even more special. I was leading a Santa Cruz Bird Club field trip along the north coast of the county when I got a call from one of the birders in the group that he had found an immature Ferruginous Hawk interacting with Red-Tail Hawk.
Although my favorite bird is the one I'm photographing, I do have a soft spot for the Say's Phoebe (Sayornis saya), which is a passerine bird in the tyrant flycatcher family. Named for Thomas Say, an American naturalist, I find this bird striking in it's gray-brown back, black square tail, and buffy cinnamon below. The colors blend in very well in dry brown fields it frequents.
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.
This little bird is about 5.75" long with a wing span of 10" and only weighs .63oz (18g) but like warblers they are constantly moving in search of insects. I first saw this bird on Dec 31, 2011 a few days after it showed up at the Santa Cruz Court house which is located along the San Lorenzo River.
