For National Bird Day, a Phainopepla on the Tuolumne River

It's hard to choose a favorite bird to post on National Bird Day. I have lots of favorites and they change from day to day. So I'm going with the bird I was the most pleased to find during the first days of 2019. I was on the Tuolumne River at Old Basso Bridge when I spotted a black bird in a treetop. I assumed it was a blackbird (it was black, after all), but the crest became visible and I knew right away I was looking at a Phainopepla (Phainopepla nitens).

Phainopeplas are birds of the southwest deserts and they are not abundant in our area, as we are at the northern limits of their range. There have been a couple of them living along the Parkway Trail, but they may have moved on when the elderberries gave out last month.

I love them for the challenge they give me in spotting them, and for their intense red eyes. This last shot shows them pretty well. The challenge in this case was getting the camera to focus on the bird through all of the intervening branches.

Happy National Bird Day! What's your favorite bird at the moment?

Can you Spot a Spotted Towhee? Here's one on the Tuolumne River

Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched? If you are exploring my part of the world, you may indeed be watched by a creature with reddish eyes, hiding in the brush. It's not a scary creature though, just a reclusive one. It's a Spotted Towhee (Pipilo maculatus), a large member of the sparrow family. I've posted one picture of the bird previously, a breeding male (it makes them more brave, so they perch on high branches) in the Grand Canyon last summer. I've seen them in the brush at the Joe Domecq Wilderness on the Tuolumne River on lots of occasions, but they've always been too cautious and fly deeper into the forest before I can snap a picture.

The Joe Domecq Wilderness is a special spot on the Tuolumne River where it passes through the Mother Lode of California's legendary Gold Rush. The land here was subjected to gold dredging, which destroyed the riparian forest and left a barren pile of boulders. Time has softened the devastation a bit, and the small park and pond is now a nice spot for birdwatching. It's administered (somewhat) by Stanislaus County (hey folks, the picnic tables need to be replaced).

I was there this morning just prior to meeting a group from the Tuolumne River Trust for a canoe trip down the river for a few miles. It was a marvelous day, and I appreciated the chance to see a section of the river I've never seen before (there are lots of those, actually). The Towhee was darting in and out of the branches of a large oak tree, but it finally stopped long enough for a few relatively sharp shots.

And then, it disappeared again.