The times I hear of a rare bird in my area I get excited especially when it is a lifer. So when I heard a report of a Painted Bunting in San Benito County just over the Santa Cruz County line I went for it.
It's always exciting to find a rare visitor to your area but when you also get the opportunity to observe behavioral interactions the encounter becomes even more special. I was leading a Santa Cruz Bird Club field trip along the north coast of the county when I got a call from one of the birders in the group that he had found an immature Ferruginous Hawk interacting with Red-Tail Hawk.
About a year ago I featured the birds that are frequent visitors around my home. Last weekend I wasn’t in the mood to do a lot of traveling so Jeannine and I and our 2 Leos hung around the house. We did a lot of cooking and I had made Pho from a recipe I found and it was confirmed as very close to home made based on my friends mom’s recipe. So when it comes to birds, I’m easily distracted and when a flock of 50+ Pine Siskins flew in I picked up my camera and started a bird count.
Although my favorite bird is the one I'm photographing, I do have a soft spot for the Say's Phoebe (Sayornis saya), which is a passerine bird in the tyrant flycatcher family. Named for Thomas Say, an American naturalist, I find this bird striking in it's gray-brown back, black square tail, and buffy cinnamon below. The colors blend in very well in dry brown fields it frequents.
Last Sunday J and I went on an 11 hour tour and the seas did get rough. We joined Debi Shearwater on a Shearwater Journeys pelagic trip around Half Moon Bay. The trip departed at 7am out of Pillar Point Harbor where we first checked out the jetties for shorebirds. Since the sun had just risen, there was a warmth to the light giving the white Elegant Terns an orange glow.