California: birds in Steinbeck country

Smokestacks in Monterrey Bay, CA. Check the top of the tallest smokestack - there is something there!


Here's a closer shot - it's a peregrine falcon, breakfasting on a pigeon:


Moonglow Diary near Salinas CA is the most reliable spot to see tricolored blackbirds (note to whoever names them - how can blackbirds be tricolored?). As a matter of fact, you cannot not see them - it's hard to miss such a swarm:






Western Grebes in LA:






Marbled Godwit near Salinas, CA:


Black Phoebe:


California Towhee:


Rufous-crowned Sparrow in LA:


Common Yellowthroat:




Western Gull:


Western Bluebird:


Blue-gray Gnatcatcher:


White-breasted Nuthatch in the mountains above LA:


Clark's Grebe with its family:


Mating dragonflies in an LA park:

California raptors

In Irvine's San Joaquin wetlands, the first thing I saw was this immature Cooper's Hawk:





The same hawk on a different day:




Hawk vs Hummingbird:


This is a California Condor. They went nearly extinct, but now a small population has been released back into the wild. The easiest place to see them is in Big Sur. Their wingspan is 9 feet - like a small airplane.


A red-shouldered hawk. The population in California looks very different from the ones we see on the east coast.


A male northern harrier. For some reason, they are much harder to find than the females.


This is a female northern harrier. The have disc-shaped heads because like owls, they hunt mostly by hearing. The round shape of the face helps channel sounds to its ears.


This is the most common hawk in US - a red-tailed hawk. (Check out those tail feathers.) Most of the hawks you see casually are red-tails.


A red-tail hawk pair. With raptors, the female is the larger one.


Not quite a raptor, but a cool bird nonetheless - the American Crow.

California Hummingbirds and Woodpeckers

Hummingbirds rarely stay put. They flap their wings 70 times per second, and scout around like maniacs. But once in a while, they do sit down and rest. I caught a few of these moment's in San Joaquin wetlands in Los Angeles. This is an Allen's Hummingbird:









This one is an Anna's Hummingbird:


Now on to woodpeckers. A unique species native to the US West is an Acorn Woodpecker:


It's unique in many ways. One of them is how it stores its food, the acorns: in self-made little holes in a thick dead tree:


His stash can get pretty big:


And even bigger:


Moreover, they stash the acorns in any nook and cranny they can find nearby, such as the cracks between these roof tiles:




One of the reasons the stash is so big is that Acorn Woodpeckers are actually a colonial bird. The colony is formed around a main pair:


This tree has several acorn woodpeckers on it. Aside from the main pair, the other birds are usually 1st and 2nd-year descendants of it, helping the family out, like all kids should.


Final shot - back to the cooperative Allen's Hummingbird from San Joaquin wetlands: