Weekend Road trip

Our drive up to Santa Rosalia this last weekend ended up with a nice surprise. Read about it on http://www.10000birds.com/owls-at-70-mph.htm

Thanks everybody!!

Well, dang it.....I got all those pictures and stories posted, when I realized I total forgot to talk about the more rare of the shorebirds that we get to see here on the Baja....the Wandering Tattler! This is one of the larger birds that are on the Pacific side of the Baja, but I rarely ever see more than one or two a year. I would love to photograph one in its breeding plumage, but unfortunately, they will have migrated north before we get to enjoy the strongly barred breast coloration that they acquire.

So, here is what they look like when we get to see them.

Conquista Agraria inland birds

I have covered many of the birds that we find on the beach at Conquista Agraria, but the landscape changes pretty dramatically by just going a 100 yards inland. We trade white sand, and mollusk cover rocky points for cactus, thorny shrubs and short desert grasses.

One bird that could be considered a transition birds would be the Osprey. While is lives on the dry land side of things, it lives completely on fish, so much of time we see them, they are hovering above the water fishing, as it were. They then return to the desert, and their favorite cactus, in order to dine on fresh fish.

Crested Cara cara's are a beautiful bird of prey, that while they have been known to eat a lizard, or mouse, tend to eat carrion more often then not. I guess they trade quality of the meal for ease of catching it.

When you move up into the brushy arroyos, that many of the birds gather in, both for protection, as well as increased food supply, then tend to get smaller as well. This one particular arroyo has been a real boom for me, with a larger number of species there.

I counted 26 California Quail one evening.

One of the most beautiful desert birds of all time, in my opinion, is the Green-tailed Towhee!  They tend to stay down in the thick brush, so to get a shot like this, I was absolutely thrilled!

There are always a lot of the tiny little California Gnatcatchers...

One of the biggest surprises for me was when this lovely little White-crowned Sparrow showed up!

There are several different desert sparrows, but this Savannah Sparrow could be called a transitional bird as well, as it was found up in the scrub, and then an hour later, down grabbing bugs along the rocky ocean shore!

Small peeps from the coast!

By now you know that we have been spending some of our quality bird time over with the migrating shorebirds, on the Pacific side of the Baja. I have covered some of the larger birds that we saw, so today I will cover the smaller birds, or "peeps" as they sometimes are referred to.

My all time favorite peep has to be the Snowy Plover. With the bird on the endangered, or threatened species list, depending on the location you find the birds in, it is always fun to see them, and get some nice photos.

We don't get to see Western Sandpipers over on the Sea of Cortez side very often, so it is fun to see this beautiful bird, even if it is pretty common through out the world

One of the more common peeps all over North America is the Semi-palmated Plover, but does not make them any less fun to photograph!

If you were to count the peeps on the Pacific Coast, I would have to think that the Sanderling would be a large number ahead of all the others! Here in Mexico is no different, as wee see flocks of 50 to 75 birds quite often.

For tomorrows blog, we will move a couple of hundred yards in shore and cover some of the desert birds that live close to water!

Catching up...and some shorebirds

Ahh, I guess I could write in here all about the things that have been going on in our lives that have pulled me away from the blog, but you probably don't care! Suffice it to say, there are a lot of changes going on right now. The next adventure in Jeanne and my life is starting to take form. We have sold the Durango, and bought a new (to us) Ford 350 diesel 4x4. This is to haul the new 5th wheel that we are going to buy, more on that after this weekend. Our little desert trailer, Casa Poquita is now for sale, and soon the boat will be as well. We have found partners to take over the Marine Business, to be finalized about this time next year. So, then it will be all about the birds!!  I will begin doing guided bird tours full time, and in the off season, we will travel to where the birds are!

So now you know what I have been up too, but there still has been some time for finding a bird or two!! We have been over to the Pacific Coast side of the Baja several times as the shorebirds are migrating thru, and changing into their breeding plumages. This has become one of our favorite "beach" campsites!

There were pretty large numbers of Surfbirds.....

The Ruddy Turnstones were just starting to get their breed colors..

And the Black-bellied Plovers don't quite have the black bellies yet either!

Hopefully, things are starting to settle down a bit and I can go back to shooting birds (with a camera) and keep up with my writing!!