T is for . . . .

Titmouse

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe this is an oak titmouse (Baeolophus inornatus)

It's A Bird!

California Towhee (Pipilo crissalis)

Western bluebird (Sialia mexicana)

Hummingbird sitting on its nest

Spotted towhee (Pipilo maculatus)

Female blackheaded grosbeak.

Brains.

The Darth Vader of hummingbirds. If you use your imagination, hummingbirds flying by totally sound like a Jedi lightsaber fight.

Bee and ladybug.

Lazuli bunting. I love the curlicue shadow on its head.

Lazuli bunting.

Young mule deer.

Gophersnake pretending to be a rattlesnake. No really : they can coil up, flatten their heads and make a hissing noise that could easily fool anyone who didn't know better.

Playing a little ditty on her grass flute.

Pretty in Pink

I scoped out this Anna's hummingbird (Calypte anna) nearby. The flash of hot pink on its throat is only visible from certain angles, as I discovered.

Now you see it ....

Now you don't !

Dispatch from Pole Canyon

Gopher snake (Pituophis catenifer)

Black-headed grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus)

Lazuli bunting (Passerina amoena)

A California quail and his lady (Callipepla californica)

California thrasher (Toxostoma redivivum)

This went down when I posted this photo of the grosbeak on facebook. Katie doesn't really like birds. *

*Just click on any of the pictures to enlarge

And the answer is.....

Mystery solved! The bird who built this nest is....

Drumroll please.......

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An oriole!

Want to go on a field trip?

So as it turned out, I wasn't going to be quite as alone this week as I thought. Bob, a biologist and bander of tricolored blackbirds (not a biologist who also happens to be a tricolored blackbird), would be staying at the house and trapping blackbirds on the refuge for the next few days. His was welcome company, as I discovered when I returned to the house, elated from my close encounter of the badger kind.

"Want to go on a field trip?" the newly-arrived Bob asked me. "Sure!" I replied, and hopped in his truck--loaded up with cages and cracked corn--to drive down to the blackbirds' nettle nesting grounds. Apparently nettle is a thing they like?

(Tricolored Blackbird photograph courtesy of digitalmedia.fws.gov)

Once we reached the site, Bob spread the cracked corn on the road, placing the traps on top. This setup is apparently highly effective--the birds enter the traps to get at the corn, but the cages' design prevents the blackbirds from escaping--and has far less average mortality than the more dominant method of catching birds, mist-netting. Apparently there exists quite the divide between the trappers and the mist-netters, such that at bird-banding conferences, the two groups segregate their seating arrangements. Ah, scientific rivalry.

We went on a walk after, down to a spot overlooking a deep gorge, where across the way Bob had found a prairie falcon nest. On the way we saw a brown racer snake. Neither of us had a scope handy so we planned to bring one out the following day to get a closer look at the chicks. Some distance away from that nest, we spotted another, more unusual one. Built up high on the rock face was a nest with a long red ribbon dangling from it. Bob seemed to think it was a raven's nest, but that a horned owl had taken up residence there. We'll just have to confirm it tomorrow I guess.

Tadpoles found in a water trough.

Treefrog

Back at the house, I took Bob to see the baby barn owls, who had by now developed all their adult plumage and subsequently fledged. However, one of them did not seem to have mastered the art of flying, and upon our entrance into the barn it flew out awkwardly, bumping into the rafters and then dropping to the ground, where it proceeded to threat display to me. Bob chased it back into the barn, and we left the fledglings alone.

Not gonna lie, little owl: while your display didn't exactly scare me off, I was pretty impressed.

This funny little starling put on quite a delightful show for me--unbeknownst to him--through the one-way glass.

I started my day in the North Rim blind again, better prepared for the cold this time but no less miserably popsicle-esque by the end of obs. I kept scoping out the flight pen from a distance to make sure I could still see black shapes perched on twisted branches (miraculously, I could). Afterwards, a brief respite of hot chocolate and an episode of “Arrested Development” warmed my hands (and soul).  

There was a feeding scheduled for tonight, but I made the executive decision to move it to Friday, on account of the too-recent feeding at North Rim. All settled in for the night, I had made a hearty meal and sat down to watch my Thursday night comedy lineup on NBC . . .

Except NBC wasn’t working. Every channel except NBC was working just fine. I stared at the TV for a while incredulously. Really? REALLY?? There was nothing else on any channel, save some show on ABC where people get hit in the face with giant balls, and one of those exploitive weight loss competitions. I was almost desperate enough to consider watching an episode of the “Vampire Diaries.” Hey, I said *almost*.

And you thought I was joking...

At nearly 10, NBC came back on, so I was at least able to watch “30 Rock.”