This post was written by Nick Neely, 2010 Birding Intern.
Step right up! Step (or drive) right up to the Mono Basin for a morning bird walk sometime soon.
Each Friday at 8:00am, I lead a jaunt through our glorious County Park, on the northwest shore of the lake. The walk rambles through field and wood before ambling down a willow-lined boardwalk for views of tufa and aves. Last Friday was a tad warm, but we saw some stellar birds nonetheless, and healthy looking coyote, to boot.
There were the Lazuli Buntings nesting just off Cemetery Road, for instance. We craned our necks and eyes as a female, with a burly grasshopper in her beak, slowly crept to a clandestine nest site, just about a foot off the ground. She tried to dupe us by dropping down into a clump of willows, but we could tell she was skulking through the low-lying rose to her bower (the twitching bushes gave her away). Her dapper, blue-hooded partner was about, as well, and singing.
In the woods, meanwhile, Northern Flickers were flashing their white-rumps as they slipped through the trees, and letting forth their staccato kleer call. And above the lawn, beside wee DeChambeau Creek, we spotted a fledgling Red-bellied Sapsucker: quite downy and with only a partially-red head, yet bigger than the adult!
Down by the lake, a confused, but content Brant was still in attendance, as it has been all summer. Normally this small species of goose, with a white-ring slung round its neck, summers in the arctic. But, hey, the Mono Basin isn’t half-bad, and it’s been an anomalous season all around. Near and on the shore, there were phalaropes feeding and preening—we saw about 50 rise together and swirl elegantly, as a flock—and a convention of vocal Killdeer twittering hither and thither.
At the end of our morning, we caught superb looks of Orange-crowned Warblers, so distinctly indistinct (with a faint eye-line, and a bit of a glow on the rump) and a Warbling Vireo hanging acrobatically as it gleaned invisible (to our eye) fare from dropping leaves.
We saw about 30 species today, in all. Come join us next time. If you can’t make Friday, there’s a bird walk at County Park each Sunday, as well, led by State Park Ranger and bird-caller extraordinare Dave Marquart.