February 22

We at In Birds We Trust are very excited about all your support and contributions. It makes us even more dedicated to getting to 100 different birds, and to being responsible about really identifying those birds. This post will finish with our finds from our Turtle Bay excursion. We are about to undertake a new adventure: California Duck Days in Davis (always assuming it isn’t actually hailing when we’re scheduled for our tour!).

We saw some smaller birds at Turtle Bay. We saw a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, pale gray with natty white wing bars. We were not able to see the red crown. He was tiny and chubby, very dear. These birds are constantly busy foragers in trees, and the literature says they sometimes mine the sap wells of sapsuckers, so perhaps our little guy was following the much larger sapsucker about. We also saw Bushtits, equally tiny, a vision of pale grays. They also are always in motion, chattering to each other to keep a foraging flock together. We saw a White-breasted Nuthatch, slightly larger. These are more distinctly marked birds, with a black cap and white breast and face. They move distinctively down tree trunks, poking their sharp beaks into bark cavities for insects, and sometimes hang upside down from branches. And we saw a Bewick’s Wren, small but with a long tail flicking about, a white eye stripe, brownish gray with paler belly. These wrens are also insect foragers, usually on the lower branches of trees and shrubs.

We saw Golden-crowned Sparrows. Sparrows are hard for us to identify because there are just so darn many different kinds. All have the cone-shaped beak and the ground- or low-ranging foraging behavior. These had a black crown with a yellow patch on top, however, along with their white stripes on the wings.

And we saw Turkey Vultures, looming as they do in trees, alert for someone else’s tragedy. The first we saw had a red head so dark it was purplish, a likely sign that breeding was due to begin. It is hard, I (Catherine) know, to feel kindly toward these birds, but I’ve had a soft spot for them every since they caused an epiphany. One of the first times I thought I could hike alone in the wild, I undertook a trail in Pinnacles National Monument east of Monterey. I told the ranger where I was going, asking that she call for land and air support if I wasn’t back before dark. The trail really pushed my afraid-of-heights issues; at one point I actually did a narrow ridge on my hands and knees. But I made it to the top and was immediately treated to the sight of enormous birds, probably as big as Volkswagens, soaring above the ridge. I was immensely moved. When I got back down to report in to the ranger, certain I’d seen the first of the re-introduced condors, she said, ‘Oh yes, the turkey vultures like to soar up there at the end of the day.’ Turkey vultures? I had a religious experience prompted by turkey vultures? Well, I guess so.

Total, to 2/22: 40