Cannot recommend stopping along the entrance road to Shoreline to scan the goose flock for Cackling Geese - a ranger chased us off. But there *was* a Cackling Goose just west of the entrance kiosk.

seen just south of Big Sur Station

life bird 496, four to go

heard only, we're hoping for a look later this week, but if not this was definitely a Mountain Quail by its call.

First seen by Mary years ago, Bill finally got to see one today.

heard and seen in two locations on opposite sides of the dike. Clear "bee tee tee tee" call helped us locate the perched bird and follow it in flight. Tiny flycatcher was very active, moving constantly around trees.

A kind-hearted and extremely helpful woman alerted us to a bright male individual headed our way through the very dense vegetation. The whole group got to see its distinctive black necklace and strong white eye ring.

Foraging on the ground like a towhee, beautiful male individual.

at least 3 individual seen in the parking lot of our hotel in Harlingen were initially assumed to be Couch's Kingbirds until we woke up enough to pay attention to their trilled song. By playing the trilled song of the Tropical from recordings and observing the their green backs we confirmed the ID. The recorded Tropical song attracted the birds closer; Couch's song did not. They were twitter-pated, chasing one another when not chittering from the wires overhead.

One individual observed preening in a flock of Royals and Leasts; showed dark red bill with darker tip and dark legs.

male individual seen at the feeders

This is our official 450th life bird

heard and seen. Under tail marked with curved

Kettle of a dozen individuals with one Missisippi Kite circling around 9:15am

as we were leaving the convention center, Steve spotted a Dickcissel perched on a low scrubby bush. Sparrow-shaped bird with black triangular throat patch, yellow above and below the grey auricular area.

female

on the Oriole trail

two male individuals seen, one at Sabal Palm and one at South Padre Island

This beautiful sparrow was flitting around its rapidly shrinking high tide island, to the delight of nearly two dozen observers who braved the brisk winds for a great lifer.

We enjoyed the strong crown stripes and beautiful colors in this striking bird.

Although we were in the presence of Swamp Sparrow twice on our Texas trip months earlier, we feel today's sighting is properly our life sighting, since this time we got a much better look.

Just as we were preparing to wade back across the low part of Waldo's Dike (now overflowing with high tide water), several people called out "Yellow Rail!" We spotted the bird making a desperate swim from the flooded marsh toward shore. During his long, strenuous journey we shared scope views and got excellent looks at his facial and back markings. A truly remarkable life bird look.

1 bird, seen sleeping on a berm in the salt ponds. At first, we mistook it for a white Goose, much bigger and whiter than the other gulls in the flock.

Mary got to see this bird that Bill first saw seven years earlier at Malheur, allowing us to add one more to the life list.

At least one bright adult male, one juvenille male, and one female bird were seen perched in the sage brush.

Five or six birds ran down the road and started up the hillside. We saw a few of them climb up on a rock in the distance.

Seen by Mary, Bill, and R. J. only. The winter plumage adult ruff was a seen at approximately 1:00. It was a medium grey/brown shorebird, evenly colored above with a small head. The clean white underside was cleanly divided from the solid colored upper parts in a smooth line. Only Bill and RJ saw it on the ground before the entire shorebird flock was spooked by a Prairie Falcon flying low over the pond. In flight, the ruff was larger than the dowitchers it flew away with and showed a distinct white pattern of white across the tail and up both sides of the rump, making a U shape.

We didn't even realize this was a new bird for us until we'd gotten home.

After we snuck into a part of the park that might have been closed, we were rewarded with a great look at a Barred Owl that flushed to a nearby tree. I've never seen such huge black eyes on a bird before.

The Waterthrush's remarkably loud song echoed off the canyon walls and led us to him eventually.

This bird made several leisurely circles overhead in the late afternoon light, showing off all his diagnostic field marks.

I know this isn't a great photo, but we worked so hard to get a look at this bird that I just had to leave this shot on the website.

We pulled over upon seeing a group of birders stopped at the side of the road. They reported seeing a Lark Bunting, and we all worked together until he popped up into a shrub and waited for all of us to get looks in the scope. Then, we all went to Dairy Queen

heard and seen at a staked-out nest site

We watched the female on the nest for quite a while, she made a brief trip out of the nest for this photo in very low light.

We have officially designated this sighting as our four hundredth life bird. We were talking with a Canadian fellow who said he'd been birding for twenty years but had never seen a Purple Gallinule. Within seconds, Mary and another woman spotted the bird walking out from the reeds. In remained in the open for several minutes, so everybody could admire it in the scope.

We got to watch a kettle of several hundred Mississippi Kites circling around the horizon at sunset. I've never seen so many raptors together in one place!

Seen from the photo blind at the Resaca at Sabal Palm.

Seen from the photo blind at the Resaca at Sabal Palm. I originally marked this photo as a Green Kingfisher, but Ron Pittaway notes that it is in fact a Ringed Kingfisher.

Several birds posed cooperatively at the feeders by the visitor's center.

Several were calling from opposite the Botteri's sparrow on Old Port Isabel Road.

Spotted sleeping in a tree near the picnic area where we stopped for lunch. A very lucky find.

We saw several different family groups during the boat trip, totaling perhaps eight individuals, which I guess is more than one percent of the world's population of this species.

Mary spotted this bird at the edge of the pond using the scope.

We had a lovely sunset visit with these ducks. They were coming in to roost in this pond, and sat still for many photographs.

They're so pink! Some of the local's we met called them "Texas Flamingos".

Bill first saw this bird on Steen Mountain with Steve Shunk back in 1997. Now that Mary has seen one, we're adding it to our life list.

heard only, but still probably counts as a life bird

The distinctive lower-pitched call of this bird helped us positively identify it, even tough we had never seen it before.

Easiest life bird ever. As soon as we opened the door of the van, we saw it waiting for us on a telephone wire.

After ten or twenty minutes of watching two or three of these bouncing up and down in the scrub, a male finally popped out in the open and displayed all his glorious, metallic blues and greys.

Seen in the San Diego River, walking along fishing.

seen from shore at sunrise with great light behind

A challenging identification, Bill took some pictures.

We saw at least five or six doves today, and four of them were new to us. We have designated the Inca Dove as our official 300th life bird.

We walked up a narrow canyon lined with purple flowers. At the top, this sparrow flew up into a tree in bright sunlight and displayed its throat patch and head markings to great effect.

Finally added to the list now that Mary has also seen it.

Now added to the list after Mary saw it.

This bird became ubiquitous for the rest of our time in the desert.

Following an email report, we tramped around to the back porch of some lucky person's apartment and found this glorious bird flitting around the backyard trees.

And suddenly, there were three Harlequin Ducks swimming along like twenty feet from the sidewalk. I was so excited all I could yell was "Ducks! Ducks! Ducks!" I tried to make a digiscoping picture, which was a mistake. I ended up with a lousy picture and no real experience of observing the birds. Happily I had a more leisurely observation in nearly the same spot a few years later.

On our second visit to the harbor in as many days, we spotted this famous bird in amongst the Cormorants.

Sitting obediently in the designated tree in the University of Illinois' Demonstration Forest

Two years after Mary had great looks at a Pileated in Wisconsin, Bill got a quick glimpse of this bird flying off through the dense forest. Not a great look, but good enough.

Woah. We did make it to the Lek around sunrise, and I've never seen anything like that. They chased each other, they strutted, they fought, they made that weird toilet-plunger popping sound.

Up the hill in back of Steve and Kris's house

Our first look at this lovely gull with the white partial eye rings and black head. We heard them calling overhead throughout the weekend.

A flock of roughly two dozen, pecking around fifty feet off the road in an open field.

Sitting in the water about thirty feet from the shore of the sewage pond, a male bird. The weather was pretty horrible.

We worked pretty hard for this one, scanning through an immense flock of Canada Geese and ducks to find the solitary Emperor Goose. It was worth the trouble!

Sitting on a small twig next to Smith Creek, behind the fire station. At first, Bill thought it was a pine cone, but it turned out to be this fierce little bird with false eye patches on the back of its head and lovely plumage.

What a great look at this bird! It sat still in the pond nearest the main entrance, paddling around and displaying its lovely colors.

Remarkably, the puffin actually sat right next to the boat for a good, long time. We saw its hefty red bill, and the beginnings of its tufts. We got a good long look at another bird flying around the boat.

At last we saw the elusive rhino auklet. And today we saw a bunch of them, flying, sitting on the water, feeding, everything. None of them had their rhino horns on their bills yet, but they were very cooperative.

Described by Luke the Shearwater Trip leader as a "fuzzy little softball flying directly away from the boat". We actually saw the white crescents around its eye at the end of the trip, very gratifyingly.

A handsome first year specimen, very early in the season, and posing patiently near the boat in good light. The photographers went crazy.

A group of eight or ten of these flitting together from tree to tree. They had steely blue-grey backs and were very tiny.

Mary spotted this bird amongst huge flocks of dowitchers, willets, godwits, and other shorebirds. Bill got a pretty good picture of it.

We saw this bird occassionally preening, mostly sleeping. It showed a rufous breast with some white feathers still showing.

A surprising flock of these guys in the artifical wetlands next to The Cloisters in Morro Bay

most of the way up morro rock in a narrow crevice. We saw it and thought it might be a peregrine, but when it showed its face, we recognized it immediately

In the top of a distant pine tree. the bill looked weird (shrike-like) and the coloration was right, and the falcon guide said it was a likely bird.

We stayed until half an hour after sunset, and heard a few of the distinctive, gull-like calls. We saw a few elusive, fast-moving shapes that might have been the birds. The calls we heard were in the direction the ranger told us we should hear the Murrelets.

It was trying to eat our breakfast, and certainly eating the dog's breakfast, at our motel in Trinidad

Life Bird! In the parking lot of the rest stop, trotting along the cement.

Life Bird! Saw a dozen of them in the parking lot across from the Mcdonalds

We saw this during one of the auto tours; our car had driven passed it, but we backed up and got a nice look.

Life Bird

It landed on a telephone wire right above us as we were parked looking out over the water

Life Bird

Mary was the only participant in our group to see the black rail just beyond the lucy evans nature center parking lot. There were probably a hundred people (some from as far away as Texas) who flew in for this tide. The weather was horrible.

heard but not seen

far from the levee, eating off a seagull carcass. Even bent over, the shilouette showed how enormous that bird is.

Right where the Falcon Guide said it would be, in a particular field accessible through a particular gap in the fence.

right where the creek crosses under the little bridge, near where we expect to see the Kingfisher

Recorded as Northern Oriole, which has since been split into Bullock's and Baltimore. Presumed Bullock's, based on range. No confirming details.

Our first trip to Burney Falls, where we were guaranteed to see a Black Swift, did not yield one. Thank goodness we saw one the second time.

At the last second we received word that the Cranes were roosting at a different spot, and had to relocate. It was a lovely sunset with the sound of the flock wafting over the fields.

Sat right in the top of a tree, silhoutted against the sky at sunset. It was a windy night, and the owl had to work to keep its balance.