I don't feel like this particular content warrants much verbosity. Instead are a few photos from a visit to my nearest local patch yesterday. This PRAIRIE FALCON is a fun bird to have around locally, especially when it decides to circle overhead twice:
I also worked on the local WESTERN MEADOWLARKS a little bit. Actually, just this particular meadowlark (yeah, it's mouth is open because it was hot outside. Welcome to Cali).
And then today I spun south to Staten Island in San Joaquin County. My goal was to scope through the wintering flocks of "ALEUTIAN" CACKLING GEESE looking for banded birds. I ended up finding 7 geese with neck collars (blue collar, white font). I reported them online; I'll keep you posted on what I find out when the Bird Banding Lab gets back to me. In the meantime, here are some Aleutian Cacklers:
You can see my checklist from Staten Island here.
On my way home, I scoped through some ducks on the north side of Desmond Road (part of Cosumnes River Preserve). This male EURASIAN WIGEON, which was my first for this location, stood out like a sore thumb:
As before, you can see my checklist from Desmond Road here. Btw, if you're ever curious where these locations are, click on "map" at the top of the checklist.
Cheerio.
