| shirley
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12-21-2006 07:00 AM PT (US)
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Yesterday I went with a friend to the Panoche Valley area - just needed to go birding I guess. The weather was great and we had a good time although we missed two target species: the mountain bluebird and phainopepla; the chuckar were also elusive, but they are difficult most of the time anyway.
Starting outside of Watsonville and stopping at the reservoir we saw:
Bufflehead, Gadwall, Mallards, Red-tailed hawks, Wilson's snipes, European Starlings, Great Blue Herons, American Crows, Ravens, California Towhees, Belted Kingfishers, Mourning Doves, Eurasian Collared Doves, Brewer's Blackbirds, Rock Pigeons, Red-winged Blackbirds, Coopers Hawks, Golden Eagles ( 4 in all), Western Meadowlarks, Say's Phoebes, American Kestrels and Western Scrub Jays.
We stopped at the Paicines reservoir and observed the following:
Great & Snowy Egrets, American Coots, Double-crested Cormorants, Ruddy Ducks, Black Crown Night Herons, Res-shouldered Hawk, Ring-neck Ducks, Northern Shovelers, Yellow-billed Magpies, Common Mergansers, Western and Pied-billed Grebes, Black Phoebe, White-crowned Sparrows, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Bewick's Wren, House Finch and of course the Bald Eagles !
Heading out toward Panoche Valley and including that area we saw:
Bushtits, Western Bluebirds, Roadrunner, Nothern Flickers, Golden-crowned Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, Acorn Woodpeckers, Lesser Yellowlegs, Prairie Falcons, Long-billed Curlews, Say's Phoebes, Burrowing Owls, Northern Harrier, Loggerhead Shrikes, Horned Larks, Sage Sparrows, Tri-colored Blackbirds, California Quail, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Turkey Vultures, Dowitcher spp, Eared Grebes and Common Goldeneyes.
Hopefully I did not repeat and birds and if so I think we saw 66 species.
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