Pelagic Birding in Molly and Larry's Big Year Pelagic Birding

The Seasons of Birding:  Winter birding along the Sacramento River.     

                           

Birds wintering in Northern California rule the air and the water.  Look up, check ponds and bay and  definitely visit the agriculture fields and preserves along the Sacramento River.  There you will see cranes, geese, and plovers, oh my.

This post is about our two 2024 long (up well before dark, home after dark) one day Winter Birding trips to the Pacific flyway along the Sacramento River. 

The first trip long trip focused on winter birds north of Sacramento.   The second trip focused on winter birds south of San Francisco

Long Day trip number 1:.  North of Sacramento Loop, January 27th:

Our Northern loop started with a search for the Northern Shrike.   The Northern shrike had been reported in a meadow at the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge Rio Vista Unit.  This would be a very southerly location for the Shrike who breeds in the far northern tundraa.

The Rio Vista Unit of the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge(SWR) is one of many units of  the Sacramento Wildlife refuge.  The main refuge locale is well known for their loop drive to see migrating geese in the winter.  But SWR also has several other sections or 'units' and Rio Vista turned out to be the choice for a wintering over Northern Shrike. 

The walk from the parking to 'Shrike meadow' turned out to be  a delightful short hike along the Sacramento River to a couple of meadows.  As I scanned our GPS coordinates for previous Northern Shrikes settings posted by thoughtful birders. the shrike flew in and perched high above us.  Molly commented that the scaling on its chest reminded her of an Inca Dove.  Similar scaling is definitely not found on its smaller and much more prevalent cousin, the Loggerheaded Shrike.

Northern Shrike

With our Shrike hunt over we headed south to the main unit of the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge.  The highlight of the preserve is the six mile auto route tour of the various ponds. Thousands of Snow geese graced the ponds.  We were able to stop and search for Ross's Goose.  Check out the photo of the diminutive cuties.  There were also a few Bald Eagles around, like this young'un below.

Ross' geese in front of Snow geese

The last bird target of the day was the Mountain plover.  The Mountain plover is in decline and is considered to be a Near threatened Species on EBird.   Here are photos from the end of November 2021 of plover sightings at the Crossroads of Colusa County Road 45.

And here are photos we took this year.  Zip. Nada. Zilch!

We struck out.  I believe it was a combination of starting later in the season and a general decline of the plover population, a common fate for any birds that needs a lot of short grass space..  However, striking out in birding always leads to some good learning.  As we wandered the edges of the field we constantly checked our phones for audio and visual info on the plover.  For example, that Horned Lark we saw is no kind of plover.

Driving out Highway 45 did have other rewards.  First we stumbled upon the densest field of Snow geese we had ever seen.

Then a Ferruginous hawk, working the fields, soared by and, finally, some beautiful migrating Tundra swans graced a seasonal pond.

Long trip two:  South of Sacramento, February 3rd.

Currently, Northern California Mountain plovers are limited to two fields, the before mentioned South of County lines, but north of Sacramento field, and the field between Robinson Road and Flannery Road near Rio Vista, southwest of Sacramento.   We struck out at the first and a week later we were heading to the second.

Spotting the plovers can be tricky as they are soil-colored and excel at freezing in fields (thus their  nickname the Prairie ghost)

And the Rio Vista area field had recently been planted with  winter wheat making plover spotting even tougher.  We finally found some plovers in the barer patches of a planted field.  Luckily, a couple of excellent birders shared a scope view with us.  (Our scope in being warrantied by the amazing Vortex plan). The little guys were too far for away for photos.  Note:  Can we figure out a way to leave a few more California field fallow from November to February for these struggling dreamy birds?

Next it was time to visit 'Sacramento Wildlife Refuge South' aka, Cosumnes River Preserve.  Consumes Preserve is a crucial ecology center along the Sacramento River Pacific Flyway area. The ponds at the preserve, the fields next door along Desmond Road, the nearby fields in the Woodbridge Ecological Preserve, and any wet local field are  crucial stopovers for migrating cranes and geese.  

We wanted to see Sandhill cranes. We needed to see them. The Northern trip swam in geese but not one of the cranes.  The Sandhill cranes uses flooded rice fields and other others with low levels of water to roost at night.  While Woodbridge and Consumes are great places to look for tall ganders we saw our first twelve Cranes.while driving along highway 12 in one many little crucial fields.

 At Cosumnes there were lots of geese, but the highlight was not a bird but a mammal.  

Yep, that was our first mink peaking out from the rushes at Cosumnes.  And at the top of this post is our official Woodbridge 2024 Sandhill crane photo.  Now it is time to buckle down and do some down home Winter birding.  

See you in the field

Larry