Monday, April 9, 2012

Field Notes 4.8.12

Anticipating a lovely and warm April evening, we packed a picnic dinner and drove yet again to Home Lake.  American avocets and yellow-headed blackbirds have returned to the Valley!  We walked the perimeter of Home Lake expecting to see the white pelicans that had been on the lake the day before but they had moved on to another body of water.

We drove on to Monte Vista NWR and ate our dinner at the picnic table near the first marsh. Our yellow-headed blackbird friends serenaded us with their drawn-out metallic choruses. Tree swallows looped and dived overhead. At the second slough we were happy to see that ruddy ducks, their cocky little tails pointed upward, were back in the Valley, too. Two marsh wrens scolded from the cattails and an American tree sparrow flitted around in the chico. 

On the return drive along CR108, a great horned owl swooped down from a power pole and flew directly in front of our windshield.

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