California highlights - September 2013

Just back from two weeks in California with a large Birdfinders group. As usual, the tour provided top notch birding and for what it lacked in diversity (260 species was our lowest tour total in ten years) the tour more than made up for in quality. We added four species to our already impressive California tour list which is now approaching 400 species - Blue-footed Booby, Arctic Loon, Black Rail and Yellow-green Vireo. Here's the first batch of photo-highlights from the tour;

Arctic Loon - Bonelli Regional Park, Los Angeles Co., California.

September 22nd, 2013. This long staying and perhaps unprecedented inland bird 

gave us the best views of any loon that we had on the entire tour. 

I doubt if we'll be able to repeat this on future trips!

Blue-footed Boobies - Obsidian Butte, Salton Sea, Imperial Co., California.

September 19th, 2013. Part of a group of 15 present during our visit.

Blue-footed Booby - Lake Skinner County Park, Riverside Co., California.

September 18th, 2013. One of four present n the day we visited.

Mountain Quail - male, Bagby Recreation area, Mariposa Co., California.

September 15th, 2013. Aloof as always, we stumbled across a small roadside group

on Route 49 as we left Mariposa for the long drive around the Rim fire.

Yellow-green Vireo - Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, San Diego Co., California.

September 21st, 2013. I found this bird hard enough to see let alone photograph.

It spent most of its time high in the canopy of the cemetery's Ficus trees but over a ten minute period,

all of our group managed to get reasonable views. 

Thanks to Gay Nunn for the find and for getting the news out in such a timely manner.