Eagles, Eagles, Eagles, 01-19-20

My Birthday Week: Day One. I was in the car for the majority of the day and took Esteban with me. He did better on this trip; only whined a couple of times and tried to get into the front seat three times. But for most of the time, he was sitting politely in the middle of the back seat where he could see out of all of the windows, or sleeping on my old sweatshirt.

Start Time: 6:00 am
Start Temperature: 36º F
End Time: 11:30 pm
End Temperature: 46º F
Weather: Foggy in part, then mostly cloudy with intermittent sunshine
Total Hours in the field (includes travel time): 6.5 hours

I got up around 5:30 am and was out the door before 6 o’clock and heading out to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. It was super driving-through-a-tunnel foggy in Sacramento and into Woodland, but once I got past Woodland, it was clear and sunny. So weird! It was nice to see snow on Snow Mountain and parts of Goat Mountain.

I was hoping to see some Bald Eagles and wasn’t disappointed. The first thing I saw, though, was a pair of Ravens poking at a couple of roadkills, an opossum and a raccoon on the road.

Later, I saw two live raccoons on the road of the auto tour. They were lumbering across the road behind a phalanx of cars. I think I’m the only person who saw them at the time. And in another location, I saw an otter sitting alongside one of the march ponds, and then saw him “glassing” through the water a few seconds later. I didn’t get good photos of either the raccoons or the otter, but I was happy to see them.

At one point, I also saw a little dark brown mouse or vole jump-running across the grass on one of the levies. It ducked down into a hole before I could get my camera focused on it.

I was surprised by the number of Ring-Necked Ducks I saw along the auto-tour route, and I even got to see a few Ruddy Ducks. Those guys make me smile whenever I see them. They’re so little; they look like toys. The males aren’t in their breeding plumage yet, but when they get to that stage they’ll have neon-blue bills and ruddy-red feathers.

There were lots of Ring-Necked Pheasants out, too; mostly males. I think they’d come into the preserve because there was hunting going on all around it and they make for big targets.

A male Ring-Necked Pheasant, Phasianus colchicus

CLICK HERE for the full album of photos.

The first Bald Eagle I saw was sitting in what I call the “eagle tree” along the auto route. It was in a position, though, where I couldn’t get a clear photo through any of the car windows, so I opened the driver’s side door and raised my camera up over the car. Before I could focus on the bird, though, it took off across the marsh. Dang it! I was so upset that I almost cried. Nature made up for that near miss, though, by showing me about seven other eagles along the route, including an obliging juvenile who landed in a tree right by the car.

I was also able to track one with my camera as it flew from a marsh, across the road in front of me, and into another area where it landed on the ground. And as I was driving out of the preserve there two eagles sitting in one of the eucalyptus trees. While I took photos, a third eagle flew in and they all started doing that fast screel-talk of their. So cool! So I was happy about that, too.

The other nice surprise was seeing a flock of American White Pelicans on one of the “islands” in the wetlands. They were pretty far away, but because they’re such big birds, I was still able to get a few photos of them. All in all, I saw over 40 different species, so that was a good day of birding.

American White Pelicans, Pelecanus erythrorhynchos

I got back to the house around 1:00 pm. Driving back to Sacramento from the refuge, it was sunny until I got to Woodland – then it was light fog and overcast. Microclimates. So weird.