(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Dawn Chorus. Plumas Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count 2023; American Valley, Quincy, CA [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-12-24 I last participated in the Audubon Christmas Bird Count in 2020. I have no photos from that experience. The reason that I have no photos is that for the group and director I was under there was no time to stop to take photos, gotta count birds! AND THEN MOVE ON AND COUNT MORE BIRDS AND THEN MOVE ON AND COUNT MORE BIRDS… I felt very rushed and very useless. I came away from it saying to myself I’d never do the Christmas Bird Count again. So, three years later I did it again. This year, much different. No rushing, way more mellow group leaders (a very important factor), and two of us (myself one of the two) were sort of “walking wounded” as it were. As long as the pace was unhurried we were fine to walk, and we didn’t have any sense of needing to cover as many observation miles as possible. And that’s a good thing. Because… My group’s zone was the “MV” section. This map has a seven-mile radius. Total square miles of the American Valley Christmas Bird Count is in excess of 153 miles2; you can see the MV section is roughly one-third of that! So, of all that area that was actually in our section, this enlargement with encircled area shows pretty much the extent of our travels that day. Note that each square shown on the map is one square mile. Now, to get on with where we actually birded, here’s a Google Earth image of the area shown immediately above. Note “Snake Lake” on the map above. That’s the upper-right rectangle in the photo below. The rectangle areas are where we concentrated our bird count efforts, although by no means did we “walk the grid” inside those rectangles. I’m just trying to show some sense of perspective. Now, I’m not much of a “people photographer” because I don’t often find myself in gatherings or crowd situations, but I knew from past experience that birds themselves might be scarce, and given the weather for the day as it was shaping up, to wit, very frosty cold and hazy gray skies but calm, I resolved to at least get some photos of the people involved. So here’s the first arrivals for the day at our staging location in downtown Quincy. It’s just barely getting light outside. Note time stamp; 7:17 a.m. These next two photos are of two of the most wonderful people I’ve known since 2009; they were both teachers at Feather River College here in Quincy when I was attending there 2009-2011 (as part of my healing process following an injurious truck wreck). I took classes with both of them. As it turned out, they were the group leaders for my “MV” section, and are really the main reason I joined in the bird count again this year. I had not seen either of them since 2020, and back then only briefly. I really wanted to be able to spend the day with them. Darla Darrell As luck would have it, by golly at our first stop we did see some birds. And after this group of Pine Siskens it went rather barren. However, I can confidently report that my binocular viewing of one bird we spotted a bit later allowed us to record a Bewick’s Wren. Incidentally, all the others of my group were using Merlin on their phones, so we were also able to i.d. several birds by song/call alone. That included at least one Belted Kingfisher at this location. Pine Siskin … We were able to access a wonderful little piece of private property with instantaneous permission from the property owner (yeah, cell phones are good for something besides Merlin, but not much 😋). My one raptor photo of the day; Red-tailed Hawk. I’ve left this image unprocessed for any color adjustment; I wanted to convey the gray haziness of the day. … As the morning progressed, we did manage to find some sunny spots out in the clearings. This photo of my group (not shown: me; I’m behind the camera, just in case you were wondering) was taken at UC Berkeley Forestry Camp, an open “secret” about one of the many marvelous academic and nature study opportunities available in and around Plumas County and the Plumas National Forest. I for one was sure glad of the sun. Hoo boy, had my tootsies been cold up until now. You can see everyone is pretty well layered up, as was I. In fact, this day I actually wore a sweatshirt hoodie along with my regular fleece jacket. But I left my scarf behind after pulling it out of the drawer and then deciding I wouldn’t need it. Next time I’m packing it along whether I think I’ll really need it or not, because I sure wanted it this morning. Darrell, Michelle, Darla, and Mark. Except for Mark, the others are all retired educators from Feather River College and I took classes under each of them. … I’ll jump to the last spot on the trip now, Snake Lake. The lake extends over 150 acres, and is accessible by vehicle along its northern and eastern shores, but is a very shallow and reedy lake. It was created by miners back in the gold rush days to provide head water holding for hydraulic mining down at slightly lower elevation along Spanish Creek. To this day there are visible portions along Spanish Creek of bare hillside, utterly denuded, that were gouged out by the hydraulic mining operations. Here’s a “scenic” photo of Snake Lake at one of our stops. At times, this really is prime birding country. Today, not so much, although Darla did spot a White-headed Woodpecker, which is one species that I don’t yet have on my “photographed” list. And I sure missed it this day also. But hey, tomorrow’s another day! Now, and finally, back to the Jack O’ Lantern mushrooms. Darla had spotted them and was down at the edge of the lake, while I was staying up on the road looking for birds. Then out of curiosity I decided to go see what she was looking at. I’m real glad I did, because fungi are not one of the things I commonly come across, as my eyes aren’t on the ground all that much, with me mainly looking for birds and all. Darla took this photo of me over the mushrooms, with me looking like some intrepid naturalist. I gotta love her for that. Here’s all three of the clusters, with my glove next to one of them to show scale. And one other close-up, of that middle cluster next to my glove. But finally finally, the pièce de résistance of my trip, actual birds, and the third-time only I’ve photographed this species, Hooded Merganser, on Snake Lake 🥶🐤🐦🦉🦚🦜🦢🦅🦃🦆🙂 And now (drumroll, please), the numbers from the day (as copied from a late email from Darla, who knew I was wanting these numbers). Total was 93 species; 26 for our piece of the pie. High count for individuals: American Robin 746 Canada Goose 668 (beating European Starling, 3rd high count at 483 haha) I think I can proudly say we done good. ***** Over to you. What’s up in your birdy world? [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/24/2209406/-Dawn-Chorus-Plumas-Audubon-Society-Christmas-Bird-Count-2023-American-Valley-Quincy-CA?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/