Birding Festival - part 4 - Saturday's events

Saturday's events were another coastal field trip and then a couple of workshops in the afternoon back in Watsonville. Our coastal trip was to be Waddell Beach and Rancho del Oso located north of Davenport (which is north of Santa Cruz, CA). Now as a reminder we were traveling back home for the night and getting up around 5 a.m. each morning and driving in the dark. We drove all the way down to Watsonville to "check in." Then we are told we will meet our leader at Waddell Beach at the parking lot across the road from Rancho del Oso at 7:30. These two spots are located north and west of where we live. So that was another 45-minute drive north whereas I would have preferred to save a little time and mileage. Oh well. This birding festival is only in its fourth year. I do believe they have more organizational matters they need to learn and work on. This festival does cover a lot of geographical area, but I do think there should be various check-in areas so "locals" don't have to drive all the way to Watsonville and then drive back north again.

The photo below is what greeted us at 7:30 on Saturday morning at Waddell Beach. It was so different from Friday morning's beautiful sun shiny views. Cold, gray, and foggy. We were supposed to see or hope to see shearwaters, petrels, and/or marbled murrelets. But as you can see visibility was to be desired. The black "dots" you see out in the water are not birds of any sort, they are surfers, crazy surfers.

[Click on the images for a larger view]

I turned around away from the waves and wind and looked east and this is what I caught a glimpse of - the sun trying to burn its way through the fog/marine layer. This was also looking toward the area called Rancho del Oso where we were headed next.

Rancho del Oso is located on the coast (CA Hwy 1) as the western portion of Big Basin Redwoods State Park. This riparian area includes chapparel, coastal scrub oak and Monterey pines with Waddell Creek winding through. Birds we could expect to see were wrentits, band-tailed pigeons, CA thrashers, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches and woodpeckers.

There were several birds we did get to see at quite a distance, and a few others in such thick bushes it was difficult to get any pictures. I finally got to see a wrentit (lifer) and was surprised at the bird's size. I was expecting something the size of a chickadee, but this bird was as large or larger than a house finch. Below is a tree "dressed" in Spanish moss. I thought it was quite pretty and graceful looking. I guess it's not a parasite per se, it's considered an epiphyte. I would consider it more symbiotic where it needs to live on oak trees (and other trees) in a humid locale. I was surprised to learn that it is part of the Bromeliad family.

As we were hiking up a portion of what is known as the Skyline Trail I was able to stop and admire what was below. As you can see in this photo there are agricultural fields all around on the flatter parts. The Pacific Coast is ideal for many vegetables grown here in California.

Here is a shot of looking down at the trail. This photo shows that it was still foggy while we were hiking. Some other birds we saw on this field trip were Black Phoebe, band-tailed pigeons, chestnut-backed chickadees, oak titmice, scrub and Stellar's jays, and a few woodpeckers.

The afternoon was back in Watsonville for a couple of workshops we signed up for. Both were given by Jon Dunn who has been an editor for all 5 editions of "Field Guide to the Birds of North America" published by National Geographic Society. The first workshop was "Honing your birding skills - identifying large shorebirds." The second workshop was "Honing your birding skills - identifying small shorebirds." Mr. Dunn had a slide presentation for each workshop with excellent photos he has taken of various shorebirds. I personally feel that more advanced birders probably enjoyed the presentations more than I. I felt much of what he presented was "over my head." I also feel that it would have been good to have some type of handout to point out the differences between similar looking species. Each workshop was only 90 minutes long, so we were home bound by 5 p.m.