I got up around 8:00 but stayed in my jammies until about 9:30 when I headed off to the Cosumnes River Preserve for my walk – after rebooting the dishwasher and starting a load of laundry…

There weren’t many people at the preserve even though this was one of their Ducks in Scopes Days, and they had spotting scopes set up along the boardwalk to get a close look at the birds around it.  There weren’t a lot of birds there, and someone complained that the season was over too soon this year.  One of the volunteers with the scopes said, no, the birds were all in the surrounding pastures where flooding had brought up all the worms and crustaceans and copepods.  They were in the region, just not within the preserve itself… which made viewing difficult.  Still, I did get to see some Pintails, Mallards, Cinnamon Teals, Green-Winged Teals, American Widgeons, female Buffleheads, and Coots, House Finches, Golden-Crowned Sparrows, Red-Winged Blackbirds, a Red-Tailed Hawk and an American Kestrel.  They also had some dishes and a small microscope set up on a table so you could see a lot of the water-borne insects and larvae in it.  There were several dragonfly nymphs in it, including the cast-off shell of one that had already gone through its last instar and emerged a dragonfly, as well as a mosquito larva that curls and sprang around the water along with tiny worms and copepods. Creepy but interesting.  I walked around for about 2 hours and then headed back to the car.