Good news, Brad is back from his field assignment and from what I’ve heard, the Intrigued HQ is still standing. Yes Virginia I now believe in miracles. We’ve been on South Padre Island for a few days now and making the most of it. The migrants are now arriving and starting to get those crucial Warblers ticked off this year’s list. Also met a lot of great birders this trip that have been incredibly helpful in pushing this year’s Average Year number to 242 (link here). Still behind last year’s pace, but definitely chipped into the deficit. A lot of that is due to a healthy dose of lifers we’ve been able to hunt down. Now the busy work of making sure all the images are copied off to multiple drives, the eBird reports are filled out and the birding tracking sheets are updated…I need a nap. Brad is going to take the lead and bring us one of his own lifers from California.
Take it away Brad…
Normally when I write these brief stories, I’ve taken most of the photos because I’m carrying the larger lens and can capture the little feathered guys at a further distance. Not this time. Jan was able to hold one bird captive with her bird whisperer powers. Today’s subject was also nice enough to stay only a few yards off the path. All of the photos in this story are from her.
Jan and I had just left a major theme park in SoCal on our way back to Las Vegas to meet the kids. We stopped at the Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve (UNBNP) just outside Newport Beach to see what we could see (isn’t that why the bear went over the mountain?). I parked the car about 8:30am and started assembling the cameras. We didn’t know before we got there, but John Wayne Airport (originally called Orange County Airport) is only a couple of miles away. Unfortunately, the planes depart right over the nature preserve. While I seemed to duck every time one of the monsters flew overhead, the local bird life didn’t seem to care at all.
Being the gentleman I am, I assembled Jan’s camera first, and then started to put mine together. By the time I had my camera ready, shut the hatch, and locked the doors, Jan was already a couple hundred yards down the trail. The shrubbery near the cars was tall enough I couldn’t see which trail she had taken. But listening for a few seconds, in between airplane flights, the high-speed shutter clicking told me which way to go.
Hit the jump to learn more about the reason for all those clicks!
Continue reading California Thrasher…by Brad Marks
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