DAY 9 OF MY VACATION. I got up around 5:45 this morning and headed out to the Cosumnes River Preserve. I hadn’t been there in quite a while and wanted to see how things were going there (after all of the recent floods and whatnot). It was another perfect weather day: 43º when I headed out; 64º when I headed back…
Because I was there so early, I knew the gate to the boardwalk parking area would still be closed, so I found a safe place on the side of the road, as near to the gate as I could get without blocking it, and parked there. Then I walked into the preserve. The majority of the water was gone from there, too. But there were still a few large ponds sitting around… and one of them was brimming with Egrets (most Great Egrets, but several Snowy Egrets as well), all of them glistening white in the early morning sunlight. I took my time walking up to the pond because I didn’t want to scare the birds off, but they were so busy eating and playing “¿Quién es más macho?” with one another that they didn’t even notice me, and I was able to get pretty close to them. I counted up to 140 egrets before I quit… That is a LOT of birds!
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After the flood waters from the river recede, the standing ponds are filled with fish, crawdads, frogs, tadpoles and other tasties, and the birds just chow down. I saw some of the egrets catching fish as big or bigger than my hand… so large I didn’t think the birds would be able to swallow them. But each one managed to down its catch without totally gagging on it. I was watching one egret trying to get a carp in the right position to swallow, and the big fish kept smacking the bird in the side of the head with its tail. Bonk, bonk, bonk…! It wasn’t going down without a fight. Hahaha!
Some of the Great Egrets were still in their long breeding plumage and green faces, and those were the ones who were just walking around trying to be butch; sometimes chasing off other birds, or jumping into the air for three-second foot-to-foot combat. And all of the birds were making their loud croaking noises; sounded like a herd of hogs…
Also around the egrets were some American Avocets, Common Terns, White-Faced Ibis, Red-Winged Blackbirds, Great Blue Herons, and even a Black-Crowned Night Heron who apparently wanted some breakfast before heading off to its day roost. There were some Common Terns doing their death-drop into the water to catch fish – I worried about them because the water was shallow; I was afraid they’d break their necks! – and I saw an American White Pelican flying leisurely overhead… I got lots of photos and videos there, and was actually completely by myself for the majority of the time I was on the preserve. I saw two or three other cars, but no people until just before I was ready to leave, so that was nice, too.
I was reluctant to leave the egrets to walk around the rest of the boardwalk area, but I did. There wasn’t much water around the boardwalk itself but the plants were crazy-prolific: several different kinds of grass, including Canary grass and Rabbit’s Foot Grass, Water Primrose, tules, of course, and small rushes, several different kinds of Smartweed, Jointed Charlock, a couple of different kinds of Flat Sedge, Soap Root, Scarlet Pimpernel, Flat-Faced Downgia… tons of stuff. Too bad I pretty much suck at botany.
At the end of the boardwalk, the viewing platform was surrounded by a shallow pool, but the rest of the area was pretty much dry. When I stepped out onto the platform I could hear a raspy squawking coming from the tules and vegetation around the shore of the pond, and I thought it might be a Sora or a Rail but I couldn’t see it. Whatever it was ducked into the vegetation; I could see the plants move as the critter worked its way through them. So, I decided to leave it for a while and focused my attention instead on the few other birds around the pond. There was a pair of Canada Geese with their goslings, some more Avocets, Black-Necked Stilts, a pair of Northern Shovelers, and a couple of Long-Billed Dowitchers. A cute moment with the geese: as soon as the babies realized mom and dad were ambling toward the water, they all rushed out in front of their parents like little kids running toward a beach.
As I was taking photos and video of them, the squawking started again, so I turned slowly to look behind me along the shore of the pond… and there was a mama Virginia Rail! She moved pretty quickly at first because she was trying to shoo her babies into the tules – two tiny black fuzz-balls. She might have had more, but I only saw two them. They’re so teeny; they looked like drier lint on a stick. Hah! After that initial showing, I kept an eye and an ear out for her and was able to see her three more times as she dashed out onto the muddy edge of the pond to catch bugs and dig up worms for her kids and then dashed back into the tules to feed them. While I was watching her, another “old lady” came up onto the platform with her binoculars. I was going to tell her about the Rail – which is a rare sight at the preserve – but I didn’t want to make any noise for fear I’d scare the Rail away. [Later, I told two other people I saw as I was heading back to my car about the Rail, so I wasn’t being a total noodge about it.]
I also walked along the sidewalk that acts as a boat ramp and leads you to the river. I could see all the damage the flooding had done to the ground there, and there was still standing water in many places. I couldn’t actually get to the boat dock itself because the last fifteen or twenty feet of the ramp to the dock was under water. And that’s VERY unusual for this time of year.
I saw some American Goldfinches and Bullock’s Orioles as I was heading back to my car. The Goldfinches were pretty far away, so the photos aren’t the best… and the Orioles refused to pose for me, so I didn’t get any shots of them at all. Still, for the day, I burned through four camera batteries and took almost 2000 photos! It was a good day.
All in all, I walked for about 4 ½ hours; waaaaay past my body’s limit, so I knew I was going to pay for that with sore feet and ankles for the rest of the day, but I think it was worth to get the shots that I did.
