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| Yellow-rumped Warbler, Elk Glen Lake |
I did my new walk through the park today without seeing any coyotes in the general area of where I saw a male and a female last week. I was a little disappointed, but I figure I'm unlikely to see them every week. At 25th Avenue I walked over to Elk Glen Lake to see what birds might be around, and I soon saw a black phoebe tangle with a yellow-rumped warbler that might have been going after the same moth.
Once I got the camera out, I ended up spending more than an hour observing birds, and I even got a quick coyote encounter.
The heat wave seems to have passed, and it was a beautiful day to be out and about.
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| Yellow-rumper on a rush stalk. |
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| Reflections on Elk Glen Lake |
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| Pygmy nuthatches are one of the more ubiquitous birds I encounter in the park. They tend to travel in noisy groups, almost like bushtits, and they are not as afraid of people as many other common birds like sparrows and finches. |
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| Which isn't to say they love having camera lenses pointed right at them.... |
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| I wondered if this was the same GBH who caught the mouse last week. |
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| Lots of red-winged blackbirds have been signing around the lakes lately. Most of the birds were lost in the tules, but this one had taken up a perch at the top of a bare tree, the better to broadcast his song. |
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| A Townsend's warbler with a freshly caught moth. |
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| The bottoms of oak leaves seemed to be a good place to find insects to eat. |
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| At first I thought she was someone's dog ambling along the trail. |
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| She made a quick, short pounce but came up empty. |
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| She also decided to get off the trail right about here. |
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| Yellow warbler with oak leaves. |
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| Townie |
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| Yeller Feller |
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| Townie in brighter light. |
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| I was excited to spot a brown creeper working its way up the oak tree. |
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| They tend to be in the shade, and well-camouflaged. |
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| I was a block from home when I stopped to watch another group of pygmy nuthatches. This one appears to have a seed in its beak, but earlier I watched one of the nuthatches use a pine needle to probe into crevices of tree bark, presumably hoping to dislodge insects. |
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| Looking out back before getting on my bike, I spotted two of our neighborhood squirrels hanging out together on my neighbor's lilly pilly tree. The vines are from a fuchsia that he's got climbing around his yard (some of which I've also planted in mine since hummers like the flowers). |
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| Lots of bird action on and around Seal Rocks today. |
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| A few pelicans were even diving for fish, but I wasn't able to catch one in the act. Groups of gulls would surround each diving pelican, hoping to get a morsel for themselves. |
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| Dog Walkers |
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