The Birders Report

Red-tailed Hawk Looking Past Me photos by Larry Jordan

The weather was suppose to be cold and wet according to the weather person (like they really know).  I checked weather.com Friday night and it said there would be a break in the storm in the morning with rain returning in the afternoon.  It was sprinkling at my house at 5 am but I was ready to go.  After all, Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge is only an hour and a half from my front door.

It was cold and windy but the sun broke through for part of the day and it calmed down before the real storm hit at about 2:30 in the afternoon.

As I left the parking lot at the visitors center, within the first five minutes of my auto tour, a Peregrine Falcon flew across the road in front of me!  Well, there’s a good omen, I said to myself.  As I drove about another half a mile, I noticed a small raptor sitting in a snag a couple hundred yards off the road.  It was the Peregrine.

And then, there were two.  They were making very loud vocalizations as they displayed their amazing aerial attributes.  This collage is the best I could do with the conditions and the distance but I hope you get the idea of what an incredible show it was!

Later on I got a shot of an adult Peregrine watching me

This is one of my favorite things about raptors.  They look you right in the eye.  You can feel a real connection with them, even though they usually seem more curious than interested in what you are doing.

Maybe they just like to people watch, like this Red-shouldered Hawk that was so well hidden, I had a tough time getting this photo.

Unlike the Red-tailed Hawk at the top of the post that actually kept getting closer to me as I sat in my car, clicking away.

One of the two Great Horned Owls I spotted was in and out of view as the wind blew the branches back and forth across his resting place.  He was watching me like a hawk.

Here’s looking at you kid!  For more great bird photos from around the world, check out Bird Photography Weekly.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is asking for your help to stop the destruction of a region of wetlands that millions of birds rely upon (click on map above for more information on this important biome).

All four major flyways in North America — the aerial migration routes traveled by billions of birds each year — converge in one spot in Canada’s boreal forest, the Peace-Athabasca Delta in northeastern Alberta.  More than 1 million birds, including tundra swans, snow geese and countless ducks, stop to rest and gather strength in these undisturbed wetlands each autumn.  For many waterfowl, this area is their only nesting ground.

The U.S. State Department is on the brink of approving a new trans-boundary pipeline that would bring tar sands oil from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast, leading to additional mining and drilling for tar sands oil in the boreal forest. NRDC and our BioGems Defenders are fighting to stop the expansion of tar sands oil extraction and to protect bird habitat in the boreal forest¹.

We are calling on the State Department to say “NO” to new tar sands pipelines in the United States and encouraging a switch to cleaner forms of energy production that would reduce global warming and protect North America’s last great forests.

Click here to go straight to a pre-composed, editable email to Secretary Clinton, asking her to just say “NO” to the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

Reference  ¹ Natural Resources Defense Council, Peace-Athabasca Delta

Read More:

• Toxic Tar Sands: Profiles From The Front Lines
• Keystone Pipeline
• Environmentalists Step-up Campaign Against Keystone XL Pipeline
• Stop The Pipe

Six finalists have been named in the race for the Audubon California Bird of the Year in the effort to raise awareness about bird conservation in California.

The six species are:

• California Condor
• Clark’s Grebe
• Great Gray Owl
• Tricolored Blackbird
• Sandhill Crane
• Western Snowy Plover

Get on over to Audubon California, read about these species, and vote for the species you think should be Audubon California’s Bird of the Year!