Life at Little Sheldon

5/28/2007

Today was a good day. Woke up at 4:50, walked out of the door of the house (Sheldon) at around 5:30, and was doing point counts at 5:50 after a short hike in. I got most of the birds, I just need to not get too overwhelmed by the cacophony, focus in, and remember to keep on scanning.
After the count I came back, ate some lunch, then hung around for a while in the sun. I think I may have sunburned my face. I decided to go on a little solo hike this afternoon to see the sights, and reinforce my bird song learning.
I found a really cool spot about a 20 minutes hike behind the house. There’s this great rock outcrop with a really gnarly (oh boy, I’m picking up slang) juniper tree on top. I decided to call the spot lizard rock because that’s the first thing I saw there. I snuck up on him and got a few good pictures. I also got some even better ones later on at another outcrop in the same area. I also saw a gray flycatcher, and a male and female mountain bluebird. They must have been breeding/ had a nest in the area. I think those are my favorite birds here. They’re this really bright blue, almost like the color of a blue raspberry freezer pop. I couldn’t find their nest, if they had one, but on the hike in I found a brewer’s sparrow nest with a nestling in it and three still unhatched eggs. I also found a Northern flicker nest in another juniper tree. I knew there were hatched chicks in there because I found eggshells on the ground around the tree and saw downy feathers clinging to the bark of the tree. The mother was NOT happy that I was peeking into her nest hole. A few times I thought that she was going to attack my head, flapping around and calling like crazy. I tried to get a picture of the chicks, but the hole was too deep and at a funny angle, so I couldn’t get the camera angle right. I decided I was done stressing the mother out and left.
A little while after I got back to the house Jason spotted a Chestnut Sided Warbler in a tree in our yard, which was crazy since he/ she was about 5 states out of range. It was like I had a little piece of home coming to visit me.
It’s about 8:00 here and I’m getting sleepy. I’m definitely adjusting to this new schedule of early to bed and early to rise. I think I’ll hit the hay in a few.

~me