Gualala Birds

My wife is rarely wrong about these sort of predictions – it should give me pause in the future.

But what was I to do? I was taking a break from weed-whacking when I suddenly hear an avalanche of geese – cackling geese, flying northward. *”Holy mackeral!” (* not exact words) I said to myself, sprinting into the house, leaping up the stairs, jumping over the dog, darting around corners— to get my camera as an attempt to document this event.

I managed to get back outside with camera in hand just as the flock was heading out of view – heading to Alaska or northern Canada to breed now.

I know this is going to be a “snapshot” photo – but I have a need to document any “important” eBird reports with a photograph. “Important” usually means I’m not entirely sure what the hell the bird is I see, and I will rely on eBirds own photo-check to validate my hypothesis.

Last Monday I joined rclc.org for the first time on a birding meetup. I’ve only done a single birding meetup before – my first ever last year with my step-daughter. This time, I was nervously excited – hoping to learn a few new things and listen in on the other birders – find some people who share my budding passion.

I was surprised at the turn-out – I don’t know why, but I had assumed just a few people would show up – but it turned out to be a group of roughly 16 people !

We met at Mill Bend which made me a little birding confident as I discovered this place at the beginning of the month, and have visited it probably a dozen times. I was “familiar” with the area and the birds i knew there.

The birds didn’t exactly cooperate – we saw a few of the regulars ( in particular the common mergansers ) but the surprise for all was the Pacific River Otter. Again, my first time visiting Mill Bend earlier in the month I had seen a family of them – but this time we saw just a single otter. But she put on a show. She found a spot directly across from where we were standing and fished for probably 10-15 minutes. We watched her dive, come up, chow down on the (bullhead?), and then dive again and pull another fish. It was great. I helped identify a couple of the 29 species the group saw ( Allen Hummingbird and Belted Kingfisher). The group also called a Pacific Wren to come sit for us – the best, longest view of a Pacific Wren I’ve ever had.

The last two weeks of February have been good birding-wise – my “big-year” is at 99 which is really good considering I did 128 all of 2025.

A couple of highlights have been some nice views of a re-shouldered hawk, a bald eagle, white-tailed kit ( you can tell I like raptors), a new lifer today..

#163 Pine Siskin

I got a terrible photo of the Pine Siskin, but I managed enough pixels to validate. Plus, Merlin was telling me all day yesterday and today they were above my head. 🙂

Here are the last highlights for February