What do you do with Dowitchers?

Dowitchers? May 2, 2015

As often happens, our walk along the Santa Ana River Trail yesterday was punctuated by, "Those look different -- what do you suppose they are?" A group of brownish shorebirds, generically known to me as "bobbers," were poking around among the rocks. Fortunately, my husband had brought his camera, which is much better than my point-and-shoot for taking ID photos.

Babies!

Today there were lots of babies! The first that we saw out on the Santa Ana River Trail were the 3 surviving ducklings that I mentioned in my last post. Still OK, but farther downstream than before.

Then we saw these, a mama wood duck (or maybe Mandarin?) with 13 ducklings. She was keeping them very close, and moved them from the near shore of the river to the far side when we appeared. This was the best picture we got, and I can't tell whether the eye-stripe is long, like a Mandarin, or short, like a Woodie. OC Birder Girl has an excellent post here about identifying the females of the two species, with lots of cross-references. I hope I'll see the family again and be able to study them more closely.

Then we came upon this Mallard family. They were in a particularly fast-moving part of the river, and mama was hustling them right along. It's so cute to see the ducklings run over the surface of the water when they need to hurry! They disappeared down a branch of the stream, and I don't expect we'll see them again.

M.I.A.

The coots are gone, or nearly so. Two weeks ago, there were only about 25; last week about 15; today only 10. (Yesterday at Tri City Park in Placentia, CA, there weren't any.) So where do they go? More interestingly, how do they go? They don't fly well, at least in the park, so it's hard to imagine them taking a long journey by air. Do they hitchhike? Maybe they're like Monarch butterflies, which have migrating generations and non-migrating generations?

Egyptian goose and gosling: April 23, 2015

Also Missing In Action today was the singleton baby Egyptian goose. It was doing well a week ago, as this picture attests, Both parents were with it. But today only the parents were there, with no baby in sight. Sadness.

Clouds

"It never rains in Southern California." When I moved here, I didn't realize that this also means that there are rarely any clouds in Southern California. So when we get a nice cloudy day, we appreciate it. This past weekend, it rained, so there were some lovely clouds to look at as we walked along the Santa Ana River Trail.