Return to Thousand Oaks

We set off from our Middlefork Smith River cabin at a little after 0700hrs. A Steller’s Jay is about early and some American Robins are working the lawns. A flock of 20 or so California Quail farewell us as we turn out onto the highway. We head up to Oregon on highway 199 to Grants Pass and then on to Medford and down into California again passing Mt Shasta where we make a brief stop at a rest area. Here I find a dull plumaged Western Tanager fossicking in the top of a low tree. All long the way we can spot Turkey Vultures soaring and an occasional Red-tailed Hawk. These continue to be obvious from the car all the way to well south of Sacramento. I see a few flocks of Canada Geese in the valley near Redding. I spot a Purple Martin. We stop at the Riverside Restaurant in Red Bluff for lunch. Sitting behind an array of fine nozzles spraying water as a mist we have an excellent meal and watch 8 Common Merganser drift by preening. They are obviously a brood of l-fg (large-full grown) young with flight feathers about 3/5 grown. Cliff Swallows have a mass of nests under the nearby road bridge. A Green Heron takes off from a bankside tree to fly under the bridge. A Black Phoebe flits about over the river and below the bridge. We press on through Sacramento, see one paddock full of Great Egrets perhaps 100 or more but nothing much else of note and we stop south on a knoll with spectacular views across the San Joachim Valley somewhere about 10 miles S of the intersection with Freeway 580. A large RV passes towbaring a white Hummer!

I have stopped here before some 15 years ago when I was on my way from Sonoma to the Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. Today we press on with another stop on Freeway 5 just W of Bakersfield at a place called Castro. A tree in the rest area is full of noisy House Sparrows and some European Starlings.

Common Starling

It seems that Brewer’s Blackbirds are always to be found at roadside rest areas. A spectacular fly over of White-faced Ibis in V formations occurred at about 1930. About 85 + 65 + 45 and a few stragglers making over 200 birds, all told, and heading along the same direction as our highway. Later I find they were heading into the Buena Vista Lake bed area and crossing the freeway from the north I saw 50-100 Cattle Egret heading into the same wetlands on the S side of the road. It was now getting towards dark and the Freeway was soon to become a crawl until we were through the mountains and descending into LA. We were home a little after 2200. Very tired.

Western Tanager and White-faced Ibis highlights of the day.