California by the Numbers

Now that I am in deep with the DVOC, I am rubbing elbows with some major birders. Some of the members are in the "700" club as in - they have seen 700+ species of birds in North America. 700 is a big deal in North America since there are only about 914 species that are possible to see. I'm sure that there are a select few approaching 800 or even more. Seeing that many birds means that they have traveled north and south, east and west and chased alot of rare birds. 

Anyway, their lists got me thinking about my own species count. I looked it up in eBird. My total species is just over 1100. Of those, I have 553 recorded in North America. Of those, 20 are not "countable" meaning that the bird was not considered wild, so my real number is 533. Now, I think of myself as pretty well traveled. I've been north and south AND east and west. I've also chased rare birds. So seeing my number left me feeling a bit inadequate. 

So, this year I am paying closer attention to finding birds that I haven't seen in North America and trying to plan birding outings that will increase the number. eBird has a feature called "Target Species" so I can enter the destination and it will show me a list of birds that I do not have on my list but are being seen in that area. The California list showed Yellow-billed Magpie, Hooded Oriole, Vaux's Swift and many others but those 3 were my target for this past trip. By now you know that Little Stint unexpectedly became #534.

I planned my route precisely. My first target was Yellow-billed Magpie. Many sites were listed but the map showed that they were all along one road - Mine Road so that is where I headed. Sure enough, the birds were literally ON the road. Here is one of them with a beak full of bugs. 

Yellow-billed Magpie

Here is another one sitting on the fence. You can really see the yellow bill in this photo. Count these as #535.

Yellow-billed Magpie

That was pretty easy but I wanted to continue down Mine Road and get to the Del Valle Regional Park since I was close. Glad I stuck to the plan as I was pleasantly surprised to find not 1 but 2 Bobcats wandering up the maintenance road. I couldn't believe my eyes. 

Bobcats

A short time later, another surprise. I spotted a mother turkey and her chicks were foraging in the grass by the edge of the road. Here they are crossing the road. Good thing there were no other cars on the road - not because of the turkeys but because I was laying in the middle of the road to take this photo. 

Turkeys

Here is one of the babies in the grass. You can barely see him. 

Turkey Chick

I headed out to another park and found a few more photographable birds including this Tom Turkey struttin' his stuff to impress a lady Turkey. Who could resist this guy? 

Tom Turkey

And this Western Scrub Jay. I love these birds because they always seem to pose for me. This one even gave me directions :-)

Western Scrub Jay

The unexpected sighting here was this lizard. Nothing to look at really until you see the blue belly. 

Lizard

The lizard became even more interesting when he jumped onto another log to hang with his friend the Minion. What an ironic photo.  

Minion

And then, #536 - Hooded Oriole. The bird hung out high in the tree so I couldn't get the a good photo. 

Hooded Oriole

I'll tell you about #537 in another post. 

It's Madame Foreperson to you

Why am I posting my jury duty memoir to a birding blog?  Because this can only happen to me.  I was picked to serve on a civil case in Montgomery County this week.  The case was typical of what you would assume - a car accident that resulted in the plaintiff alleging back injury.  The part that can only happen to me?  The cause of the car accident was that the defendant was distracted from driving because she saw a woman running across the road chasing an injured Turkey. I am not kidding. I can't make this stuff up. 

I was juror #4 yesterday listening to testimony about back injury, herniated disks, injections, pre-existing conditions, loss of sex drive, you name it.  All I could think about was, what happened to the turkey?  Did the woman catch it and take it to the rehab?  Did it recover?

Today, I was promoted from juror #4 to foreperson when we went into deliberations.  I seemed to be the only person on the jury who had served before and wasn't afraid of the foreperson responsibility. Not guilty and no monetary award was our verdict.

Oh, and I had a Baltimore Oriole and Cedar Waxwing in the yard this morning. Cool.

March Madness

I feel sorry for all of you who had a bracket pool on the NCAA Basketball Tournament.  Two of the Final Four teams are West Virginia and Butler. I never even heard of Butler. Nobody picked these teams to go past the first few rounds.  It has been exciting to follow little teams such as West Virginia and Northern Iowa as they slayed the big names.  It was disappointing to see Villanova knocked out in the second round though.
March has also proven to be an interesting time for bird life at our house.  We had our third surprise March visitor today.  I wasn't blogging when the first surprise showed up in the yard a few years ago - a Woodcock fluttering straight up and down and making peenting sounds (yes, I spelled that right - peent) for courtship.  I also didn't have a camera ready that day, so there are no photos of that day's event.

Last March, you may remember that I saw and photographed a Ring-necked Pheasant hanging around the pond.  Here is a link to that post and a photo refresher:

Well, today March Madness struck again!  I was washing up the breakfast dishes when Connie proclaimed "Oh - My - God.  There's a turkey at the feeder".  And sure enough, there she was pecking at the seed in the driveway as if it was her normal routine.  This is a photo through the kitchen window.  Kind of fuzzy, but I wanted you to see how close she was to the house:

She stayed 10 minutes or so before moving on to the yard.  She even stayed put as Connie went outside, got in the car and drove off.  She even stayed in the yard while I photographed her. 

Which team will win the NCAA tournament?  Its anyone's guess at this point.  Will I have my eyes trained on the yard in March?  Absolutely.  You just never know who will show up next.