From a small town to a big city...
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A Birding Blog
By Jared Conaway
From a small town to a big city...
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Good morning, afternoon, evening or whatever time of day it happens to be, and welcome to today's post. Before this adventure begins, I have to say this: I will be working on and finishing one to 2 posts this week. R.I.P summer, it passed away 4 weeks ago. This means it will take a week's worth of evenings to establish a big post such as these 2 I have in mind on this blog. Ya know, Algebra 2? Uugh with the 'h' sounded out, why, why, why, why can't it follow the sequel-better-than-prequel memo? Sunday, August 26th, 2018: For over a week now, a 1st year Tricolored Heron, Marbled Godwit, and Forster's Terns (5 on Tuesday) have been staying at -you wanna guess- the legendary Glendale Recharge Ponds (Yours's truly patch)! You guys don't know this, because this was before the blog, the Tricolored Heron was the very first bird I chased when we moved. It was there for a month before we made it down. I went for it 2 days after the big move, September 11th. I failed. Twice. However, the GRPs were at their most epic was mid-August: Fulvous Whistling Duck (5 of them!!!!!) 2 Tricolored Herons, a Reddish Egret, a possible Little Blue Heron, a Red Knot, Short-billed Dowitcher, Snowy Plover, and a Common Tern!! Poor Jared was 3,500 miles away... Well this time I'm only- hold on let me pull up Google Maps (#notsponsered).........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Hold on....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 11 miles away via the fastest route. As usual we started with Basin 4, because the parking area is there. I started off with a large sandpiper that made a "Pi-tweep" call, I'm thinking PECTORAL SANDPIPER. There were also a few WILSON'S PHALAROPES, SOLITARY SANDPIPER, LESSER YELLOWLEGS, Greater Yellowlegs, and the bird that shall not named. "The Killde-?" "Ah no, no, no, shh, shhhh, shhh ,shhhhh." Unusual was the daily dose of DOUBLE-CRESTED CORMORANTS. Here our Neotropics usually outnumber Double-crested big time, I say usually because this time was an exception. There were 2 flocks of them today each with 20 and at least one of them had a few Neotropics mixed in. Priority was in basin 6, I was sure because that's were a big floick of egrets and herons were and a birder said he saw it fly that direction a minute ago. "To basin 6!" And here was this girl birder looking for a Baird's Sandpiper. My next post will feature an overweight Baird's Sandpiper, I don't have a photo. So I asked about the heron, and she said, "Oh, I wasn't aware there was one here but thanks for letting me know, I had no idea!" It was only a minute later that she found it! Finally, after nearly 365 days of the sun revolving, God blessed me with one of my favorite birds! She allowed me to enjoy through her scope. It really stood out from the other herons. For one, it is smaller but longer than a Snowy Egret, the color is completely different, lilac-blue-gray and chestnut-orange on the neck and mantle, a white stripe from the throat to the breast flowing into a snowy underside. Their foraging behavior is completely different, too, they jump and run around while spreading the wings a little. Great Blue Herons just stand there with the Great Egrets. Afer enjoying this gorgeous small egret from a distance (that's right, it belongs to genus Egretta, thus making it an egret) we had to go from AK to AZ. AK was where we stood, far away, we had to walk to point AZ to establish my blog photoshoot with this heron. Also it's not tricolored, it's more like decacolored. I was surprised to see that it was hanging by the right bank, the berm we were walking on. Often with large waterbirds & shorbs, or any bird for that matter, crappy photos are involved. The reason being that you don't want to try your luck at forcing your first pic to be perfect. Start with a reasonable distance, snap one for the taking, and then double your distance closer to the bird, and take another one. move closer by 1 3rd, then 1/4th, 1 5th, and so on, minimizing the movement towards the bird slightly smaller every time. "DON'T get any closer!!" The Snowy Egret bailed after I approached with slight movement. ...But THIS is the photo you and I were waiting for! ladygrosbeaks and gentletanagers, I present to you the TRICOLORED HERON! We did it! There were a few photos that came before this one, but we don't speak of those. This is a mild standstill of the Tricolored Heron's graceful foraging posture, the wings were spread more most of the time. And this is the final result of patience with this young individual. He was the last egret to take flight. On the way back we gave a little more attention to an OSPREY we saw earlier. And yes, the spectacular plunge-dive was witnessed, much more than once. Eventually it caught a large, round fish of about 12 inches. This time I actually got to see the epic dive, the effort that was put into catching this fish. I love Ospreys.
Back to the parking lot, a very odd-colored, small & slender heron was flying over the riparian. It was the Tricolored Heron! Jeff confirmed my thoughts too. We found him earlier, he said he looked for the heron without luck, and I responded confidently that we would find it. We did, so I went over there to tell him. I also birded for a few minutes with him, without anything interesting, except of course the flyover TRICOLORED HERON! When I got home: 'The freaking Marbled Godwit was there when I was there! Oh, and in basin 4, I walked by it plus birded it twice! But hey, thank God for the Tricolored freaking Heron! Stay tuned for my upcoming 2 posts! #followcommentlikeshareplz.
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