foomamablumbie

where covfefe gets real

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More birds and other wildlife at Tedderhaven

Stick insect, about 8″ from tail to tip of antenna
That face!
Young golden-fronted woodpecker; he hasn’t grown his colors all the way yet
There are two young woodpeckers; this is the female. She will have a yellow patch and an orange patch, and the male will have an additional red patch on his head.
House finch, taking a break from feeding his insistent young
Young chickadee with unruly feathers
Black crested titmouse

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Research activity

Three boats, all the same make and general appearance, with a lot of young people with a definite grad student vibe
Serious looking wake board boots! Also spotlights.
This guy was in the water the whole time we watched. He had a piece of equipment with him, but it didn’t look like he had diving gear.
I didn’t stick around to find out what happened after this. Also, there was a different boat that had a weird platform the width of the boat about four feet up–like an observation platform but it would have felt terribly unstable to be up there. I forgot to take a picture of it.

Thanks to Mom getting my attention with the hose (I was vacuuming the plunge pool, obliviously listening to a podcast), we got some photos of this very interesting activity right in front of the house this morning. Pretty sure it was research of some sort; all the boats were the same, just different colors, and the people looked like they were either waiting or else acting purposefully. Plus equipment!

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Brown booby and others

Brown booby
Cliff swallows
Scissor-tailed flycatcher
Lizard, ID tbd
Canyon Lake stump

The Canyon Lake Birders Facebook group is fun but a little discouraging because people seem to see all kinds of birds and I feel like about once a year I find something neat. Last night’s trip to the dam, however, was really nice. The word was that a stray brown booby had been at the dam in the evening over the last week. It’s been hanging out on the control structure, but at first look it was a cormorant (which I’m really getting tired of seeing, tbh). However, it later turned into the brown booby, so that was exciting–it’s a very rare bird to see and now we have it on our life lists. Some of us can’t say the name without giggling but others of us have been enjoying weird bird names long enough that we are over it. My favorite silly name is blue-footed booby.

Suzy spotted the scissor-tailed flycatcher on the wire (they love to hang out up there) and it struck an elegant pose for me.

I was really excited to spot a swarm of bats under a ledge on the dam control structure around the corner from the brown booby–but it turned out that they were cliff swallows.

The lizard lives in the fire pit and fortunately leaves when it’s being used.

I’ve taken a picture of those stumps about once a month, each time thinking there is something exciting perched there. But instead I have a collection of pictures of the stumps.