Grasshopper sparrow. Nelson’s Sharp Tailed, Seaside, LeConte’s. A good sparrow day. A long day, started and ended with owls. We saw the short-eared owl out on the salt flats at dawn. Ended with the barred owl in the forest at dark, seventy-five miles from home. It was a good day.
Another challenge
Know how you park your car in the lot at the shopping center and when you come back out there is an advertising flyer stuck under the windshield wiper? Our daughter got one on her car. She parked her MINIVAN filled with KID’S CARSEATS and came back to find an advertisement for a singles club. It’s a card to fill out and mail in. It’s postage free; the club will pay the postage on each card they receive back. You may be ahead of me in this story, deciding what you might do with the postage-paid card, but wait! Before you drop that card in the mailbox in you head, let me tell you that each card included the warning: “mailers of blank cards will be prosecuted”. Ooh. Now there is a challenge. Wouldn’t want to tempt prosecution by mailing in a blank card. They might come straight to your blank address and arrest right you on the blank spot.
Another challenge…
Can you spot the owl in this picture?
We need…
We need professional help! There are four sparrows here we’re not going to get without professional help. They’re reclusive and hard to recognize from a fleeting glimpse of their backside as they drop back down into the grass or bushes. We’ve hired a local bird guide for a sparrow day. He thinks we can get all four…
Pollywog ponds
Kingbirds and Kiskadees. You might think that is a western kingbird, but not so. Look closely at the yellow. It goes all the way up to his throat. Couch’s kingbird. And the great kiskadee. He looks and acts like all bird should when you’re trying to identify them. Conspicuous. Loud. Black, white, and yellow. None of this flitting little brown bird in the bushes stuff.