And now for a little birding

Bright and early (ish) on Saturday, Don arrived - here for a weekend of sun, fun and birds, birds, more birds. We decided to head out to Stanislaus County and Del Puerto Canyon Road.

♫ Nazareth your famous son, should have stayed a great unknown, like his father carving wood, he'd have...♪♫

DAMN IT!

Anyway, Del Puerto is a narrow, windy road that wends its way from Patterson/Hwy 5, west to Sunnyvale - or thereabouts. What's great about the road is it's like a mini-Canyon with just the birds, birds & more birds we wanted to see.

Our first stop was to the Owl Arms Condos.

This is the distance from which all the owl/red-tail photos below were taken
And who, who, whooooo .... you may ask, lives in the Owl Arms Condos?
The Great-horned Owl Family - Parent with two chicks in this 'family' room

Look into the dark baby birdie bedroom and you'll a third fuzzy owl chick
And there are the other neighbors too, like Ms. Red-tail Hawk who lives only three doors over from the Owl family.

The show-off - she paid extra for that vaulted ceiling
Now here is the big point of the day. Normally I use my 100-400mm Canon lens set up for birdie photos. But on this day, once again I tried using my Kowa spotting scope paired up with my little Powershot Canon for a few digiscope shots. To my amazement, I had the best luck with my digiscoping ever! All the birdie photos above were taken with my digiscope and they came out spectacularly sharp with no black halo (vignetting) at all. Now, if only I can puzzle out how I accomplished the no halo look.
We made several other stops along Del Puerto Road. Don found several birds for his annual birding list. We found a Califoria Thrasher, here via digiscoping:

A California Thrasher, who thinks 'SQWAWWW' is a song



Singing Rock Wren atop a pine bough, high up on a hill

Of the day's semi-failures was that I was unable, for the life of me, to get any good digiscopes of a beautiful little purple-chinned Costa's Hummingbird. The Costas are really desert hummers and Del Puerto is about as far north as they usual get.

The Costa's having a go at wild Tabacco tree flowers

You can see the purple on this bird's gorget (bib). Not the best photo but oh well
There was time for some wildflowers like this Dense Owl's Clover... Owl's Clover? I didn't make that up.

Owl's Clover

I love the yellow & lavendar of these penstemon flowers
So now you're thinking I don't like birds anymore? As if.

Where do you go at day's end to find birds? Bird Road of course.

And What's on Bird Road? A Cassin's Kingbird of course
♫ Tables chairs and oaken chests, would have suited Jesus best...♪♫

Give me strength...

Special Delivery from San Diego

[Management: on she goes... hopefully now she'll plow through until she catches up with herself]

♪♫ You started to believe, the things they say of you, you really do believe this talk of God is true...♪♫
Friday morning, bright and early, I picked up buddy Joann, up from San Diego for the weekend. Being the sneaky sort it was decided we would drive over to Livermore. On the drive down, it was raining, a perk for our drought ridden state, and a side effect of having Joann visiting (no, really, it rains whenever she comes up here without Gene).

♫ Listen Jesus I don't like what I see. All I ask is that you listen to me...♪♫
We took a leisurely route, by way of Twin Cities Road. On the country road over to the Consumnes Wildlife Refuge, Joann shouted, "JERKY!"

I pulled a U-turn and drove slowly, peering intently at the asphalt.

Joann - "What are you doing?"

Claire - "I'm looking for whatever died on the road... you know... the jerky..."

Joann - "Road kill? I'm talking about that Store back there, with the big sign, 'Jerky'!

Claire - 'Ooooo...."


No road kill here! Just my buddy Joann, and the butcher
♪♫Christ you know I love you, did you see I waved...!♪♫

Anyway! We picked up some lovely jerky at the little butcher's shop, then did a quick drive through the Consumnes reserve.


These were the only cranes we saw, the rest have flown north

The last field of wildflowers for this year - Wild Radish

♫Sleep and I shall soothe you, calm you and anoint you, for your hot forehead. And you know every thing's alright...♪

Our drive was over to Livermore for a "Surprise, It's Mom & Auntie Claire" visit with Joann's son Philip & his Krista. We didn't surprise them too much (no one's hair fell out) and we stayed in a nice hotel nearby. It was a great visit though. I haven't seen P&K since their wedding two years ago. And oh yes, their 'daughter', a pretty lab, whose name I seem incapable of memorising.

Some puppy loves a visit from her grandma!

Phil got to show off his AWESOME wood working projects. He is totally a craftsman now. Makes all sorts of beautiful furniture, like this half finished chair. He made Joann a beautiful Mission style cabinet.

Ta da! Phil's latest project-in-the-making - awesome!

It was great visiting with P&K - among their current 'projects' is fixing up a new room in their house as a NURSERY... hint, hint.

♪♫What's the buzz, tell me what's happening...what's the buzz, tell me what's happening, what's the buzz♪♫
The new occupant will be by, oh, about October I think. Congratulations you two!


Krista and Phil in their front yard

It was a nice visit. On Saturday we met P&K for breakfast, before heading back up to my place.

The rest of the weekend was spent yakking (no kidding) and driving through my favorite American River Parks and 'deer hunting' come sundown. On Saturday night we saw only 3 spindly deer, which Joann pointed out was probably because of the rain. She was right, because on Sunday night all the deer were making up for lost time; we saw some 20 plus deer! The seemed to want to take advantage of the cool, wet, grazing.

♫ Heysanna Hosanna, Sanna Sanna Hosanna, Heysanna Hosan-nah!...♪♫

Here's a quickie vid of a turkey that was up a tree gobbling. You can hear some park visitor egging the bird on to greater vocal triumph.

But let's not rush past Sunday too fast! Sunday morning Joann and I went to my local Catholic Church - Happily the fonts didn't burst into billowing plumes of hell-fire as I approached. *whistles innocently*

Sunday afternoon it was time for the big event which is what got Joann up here in the first place. We had tickets for Davis Musical Theater production of Jesus Christ Superstar. It was the two of us, and a friend of mine, Linda, a fellow docent at the State Indian Museum. The three of us totally enjoyed the production, which was unlike any other I've seen at the Hobbit Theater. The stage was all black with the musicians on stage, rather than under it (yes they're usually under the stage's floor grating). The setting was stark, so the magic of the production was greater than normal. All the parts were played well and the guy who played Jesus had a wonderful voice. Bravo DMTC!

If you haven't caught on by now, the only problem with JC Superstar was it gave me the worse case of ear worms ever - the tunes keep playing over and over again in my head.
♪♫...sleep and I shall soothe you, calm you and anoint you, myrrh for your hot forehead...♪♫
Oh dear. There it goes again.

Lazy as Elk

[Management: the charade continues]

We made it back from Crescent City on Monday. The trip back was via the Avenue of the Giants. We had unusually good luck in finding Roosevelt elk at nearly every possible venue where they are found. From Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park to a marsh estuary where a herd grazed knee deep in the water - unfortunately I took no shots of the latter.

Elk enjoying the good life in the great meadow at Prairie Creek Redwoods
Elk cow enjoying a nice butt-licking at a small campground near Orick
Barbara decided to spend a few more days at my place. I dragged her out with me to see the local Vernal Pools - you tired of hearing about those yet? The season is almost over, so bear with me. The giant gold spreads of poppies are already gone, but this late season display is still pretty amazing to me. Barbara was just as surprised as I was that I should live so close to such a thing while not even knowing it existed.

Barbara enjoying the view at Pioneer Park, Fair Oaks
Pioneer Park

At Mather field, a vernal pool trails off into the distance

Aren't these Horned Dowiningia flowers pretty? They're eensie; no bigger across than your pinky nail.

Whatever pollenates these eensie flowers must be equally eensie

Oh well, it was lovely having company for so long, now I'm all alone.... until tomorrow morning!