Lake Hennessey

The weather has been great this week and I'm taking advantage of it. This morning, I went to Lake Hennessey, and hiked around the northwest shoreline, which is only accessible on foot (or non motorized boat). Once again, I found myself muttering, "If I only had a telephoto lens."


There were numerous groups of waterfowl, such as bufflehead ducks, pied grebes, western grebes, mallards, coots, double crested cormorants, Canada geese, great blue herons, and uso's.

I also saw red-tailed hawks, American kestrels, turkey vultures (TV's in birding lingo) and a northern harrier.

I was watching a great blue heron who was joined by an otter. The following four pictures were taken through my binoculars - pretty crude photography, but I was amazed and had to try something.


Then three TV's joined the party. It was quite a gathering of wildlife all in a matter of 3-4 minutes.
Well, I certainly will be returning to Lake Hennessey where it is said there are also eagles and osprey.

Back to the Sonoma-Napa Marsh

Today, I revisited the marshlands southwest of Napa and was very pleased to not find any hunters, (or anyone else).

You can walk for miles on the old levees that were built to create the salt ponds and grazing land for livestock. They are slowly being opened up as part of a plan to re-create the historic and important marshes.

Natural looking marsh above compared to the salt pond below.

This "dead forest" was caused by the super salty water killing the trees. If you look closely, you can see something hanging from a branch. Through the binoculars, below, you can see it is a dead cormorant that had fishing line hooked on it which became caught on the tree. We get birds with fishing line injuries all the time at IBRRC.

The salt ponds are at least a half mile across. That is Mt. Tamalpais in the background.

You can see a flock of coots on the water. I'm going to have to splurge for a camera with telephoto lens some day soon.

Among the ducks are four tundra swans in this picture.

The tundra swans taking off with duck escort. Well, I will be back again. The breeding season is about to begin soon. Some of the other birds I saw today were American avocets, Clark's grebes, an American kestrel, black necked stilts, snowy egrets, great egrets, killdeer, and various hawks.

Salt Ponds to Marshes

Last Tuesday, I ventured out to the marshes and salt ponds in the south Napa/Sonoma counties area to try out my new binoculars. It is a great birding area with the exception of one thing: duck hunters. They were slogging around with their dogs, occasionally letting loose with a volley of shotgun blasts. Near the parking area there is a pond that is off limits to hunting where I spotted a beautiful male American Widgeon, Ruddy Ducks, Coots, and a few others I wasn't too sure of.

I set off along the dikes of the old Cargill Salt Company ponds where I spotted a flock of Black-necked Stilts, a few Greater Yellowlegs, and numerous little sandpiper type birds. While I was scanning a group of little sandpipers covering some dead tree limbs out in the salt pond, into view came a ghoulish sight - a dead cormorant swaying from a length of fishing line. The salt ponds are slowly being converted back to natural marshland, but it is a slow process. I definitely plan to return after hunting season in February, hopefully seeing breeding displays of some of the 153 bird species that inhabit the area. Oh yeah, up in the air were numerous hawks and kites. I didn't take any bird pictures because a telephoto lens is needed.

I've Gone to the Birds!

By now you probably know that whenever you contact me, I soon start talking about birds - especially pelicans. Maybe this explains why I don't get many calls anymore, but I've decided to assault you with some visuals anyway. Since late October, I've been volunteering on Saturdays at the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Cordelia, next to the Suisun Marsh. This is one of two state of the art facilities in California that comes under the auspices of the California Fish and Game Department. I work about 10 hours with a half hour for lunch. I feel privileged to be around the staff and the birds - both are exceptional and often quite amusing. Most of these photos were taken by one of the volunteers, Liz, who made them available to me on her Flicker site.

The IBRRC is a 10,000 sq. ft. facility for the rehabilitation of wild water fowl. It is at the ready in case of a major oil spill.

Behind the main building are the therapy pools and aviaries.

This is the 100 foot long pelican aviary. Right now, there is a pelican crisis with hundreds of pelicans becoming emaciated, disoriented, and prone to other problems. The reason for this is not clear yet, but we had about 40 pelicans this past Saturday. In the wild, hundreds have died in the past two weeks.

Here I am holding the business end of a pelican that is being rinsed by Monte and Greg (facing camera). Greg is a UC Davis Vet School student, and Monte is the facilities manager. Monte is a poet, and is possibly one of the wittiest persons I've ever been around.

This pelican was contaminated with oil which prevents it from waterproofing and staying warm.

We always have grebes, it seems.

This week we had this brown booby.

A great tat worn by a dedicated IBRRC volunteer.

This is Mark Russell who has been on wildlife rescues all over the planet.

Birds often have to be tube fed either fish slurry or Pediolite.

Monte and a volunteer washing a gull, I believe.

We've had a great blue heron the past couple weeks.

That's Marie on the left, assisting Shannon, our veterinarian. She is one of the Saturday crew with a great sense of humor and is a Rehab Manager.

We currently have a couple of loons like these. In fact, all the staff are somewhat loony.

This is Donna, another Saturday regular, getting the tube feeding syringes ready.

Thank you IBRRC for fixing my broken leg.

Interns from around the world come to the center and do 3-4 month internships, working 10-12 hours a day, 5 days a week. The woman pictured is from Brazil, and left shortly after I started. Since I have been there, there have been interns from Canada, Mexico, and now England.

Well this is what it is all about - a successful release back into the wild, in this case IBRRC's backyard.