Thankfully, even though it was really early (like 6:30 AM) my wife had already prepared coffee for the two of us since she had been woken by the strange yowling beast that lives in our house.
So I packed up some gear, put on long pants and boots and a long sleeve shirt (mostly to deal with the brambles in my favorite hiking spot) and headed out in my car (I note - I would love to bike there and then bike through Yolo Bypass but bikes are not allowed - so the car is the only way).
And then withinYolo Bypass I headed to the Southern edge to my favorite hiking spot along Putah Creek.
And I wandered into this area:
I took some panoramic pics and video and texted them to my wife ...
And then hiked around for a few hours. Here are some of the things I saw there:
Belted kingfisher:
Black crowned night herons
Spotted towhees
Egrets
Lots of nice plants, such as these:
Wood ducks
Pied billed grebes
Black phoebes
Other misc. birds
Butterflies
And lots of otter poop
Oh - and some more panoramas and a selfie
And then I headed back to my car and drove to the end of the road just for completeness and headed back out towards the exit. I took a few pics from my car long the way:
Oh, and then it happened. Was heading back out and along the dirt/ gravel road a black town car was pulled over. So I slowed down, not wanting to disturb them if they saw some cool creature. And I slowly pulled up on their left. And there was a woman in the car looking through binoculars. I pulled up to be almost beside her car and she pointed up and ahead and whispered "Bald Eagle."
OMG.
There was one on the telephone pole. I had been coming to Yolo Bypass for almost 15 years with 100s of visits and had never seen one here. And so I got out my camera and at this bad angle started taking pics. After 10 minutes or so I told the woman I was going to pull ahead and to the side to get a better view. And I thanked her over and over, told her I would post pics to iNaturalist (and told her what that was) and then pulled up and took some more pics. And this is where I got some of the better ones that I am sharing here:
Oh, and then it happened. Was heading back out and along the dirt/ gravel road a black town car was pulled over. So I slowed down, not wanting to disturb them if they saw some cool creature. And I slowly pulled up on their left. And there was a woman in the car looking through binoculars. I pulled up to be almost beside her car and she pointed up and ahead and whispered "Bald Eagle."
OMG.
There was one on the telephone pole. I had been coming to Yolo Bypass for almost 15 years with 100s of visits and had never seen one here. And so I got out my camera and at this bad angle started taking pics. After 10 minutes or so I told the woman I was going to pull ahead and to the side to get a better view. And I thanked her over and over, told her I would post pics to iNaturalist (and told her what that was) and then pulled up and took some more pics. And this is where I got some of the better ones that I am sharing here:
And I followed it East down the road towards the Deep Water channel and watched as it flew far far away. I chatted with some of the people fishing and then went for another walk to see some more birds. There were a lot of interesting shorebirds in particular but also saw some others.
Here are some of those pics:
Shorebirds galore:
Blackbirds and such
Sparrows and phoebes and other small birds
Sheep (I know, they are not birds but nobody's perfect)
Hummingbirds
And even some insects such as this one:
Any many other things along the way. I then headed out taking pics along the way. Some of the better pics include these:
And then I was out of Yolo Bypass. I took the scenic route home and took some more pics. Here are some:
And then I went home and posted everything to iNaturalist. See the collection here.
