Brown booby and others

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.