Early AM at #YoloBypass and a brief encounter with a bald eagle #Birds #BirdPhotography

So yesterday I went out early in the morning to Yolo Bypass Wildife Area. I had not been in a few weeks and wanted to get out for a hike and some birding.

Thankfully, even though it was really early (like 6:30 AM) my wife had already prepared coffee for the two of us since she had been woken by the strange yowling beast that lives in our house.



So I packed up some gear, put on long pants and boots and a long sleeve shirt (mostly to deal with the brambles in my favorite hiking spot) and headed out in my car (I note - I would love to bike there and then bike through Yolo Bypass but bikes are not allowed - so the car is the only way).



And then withinYolo Bypass I headed to the Southern edge to my favorite hiking spot along Putah Creek.
 

And I wandered into this area:



I took some panoramic pics and video and texted them to my wife ...







And then I headed back to my car and drove to the end of the road just for completeness and headed back out towards the exit.  I took a few pics from my car long the way:



Oh, and then it happened.  Was heading back out and along the dirt/ gravel road a black town car was pulled over.  So I slowed down, not wanting to disturb them if they saw some cool creature.  And I slowly pulled up on their left.  And there was a woman in the car looking through binoculars.  I pulled up to be almost beside her car and she pointed up and ahead and whispered "Bald Eagle."

OMG.

There was one on the telephone pole.  I had been coming to Yolo Bypass for almost 15 years with 100s of visits and had never seen one here.  And so I got out my camera and at this bad angle started taking pics.  After 10 minutes or so I told the woman I was going to pull ahead and to the side to get a better view.  And I thanked her over and over, told her I would post pics to iNaturalist (and told her what that was) and then pulled up and took some more pics.  And this is where I got some of the better ones that I am sharing here:



And I followed it East down the road towards the Deep Water channel and watched as it flew far far away.  I chatted with some of the people fishing and then went for another walk to see some more birds.  There were a lot of interesting shorebirds in particular but also saw some others.
Here are some of those pics:

Shorebirds galore:


Blackbirds and such


Sparrows and phoebes and other small birds


Sheep (I know, they are not birds but nobody's perfect)


Hummingbirds


And even some insects such as this one:


Any many other things along the way. I then headed out taking pics along the way.  Some of the better pics include these:


And then I was out of Yolo Bypass.  I took the scenic route home and took some more pics.  Here are some:



And then I went home and posted everything to iNaturalist.  See the collection here



Bat tour at Yolo Basin Wetlands

Did our second evening bat tour at the local Yolo Basin Wetlands last night.  It was very nice.  They start off with a lecture and bat introduction at the Visitor Center and then a convoy heading out to the wetlands and drove way way into the back (the side near Sacramento) to just next to the causeway.  Then we waited until sunset and out came the bats.  Thousands and thousands of them.  It was cool.  Here are some videos and pics.  And also some responses to my Tweets about it.










































Lab meeting at Yolo Basin – science should be fun …

Was both a very good and a very bad day yesterday.  I will leave out the bad here other than to say that a close relative was diagnosed with a very bad cancer.  Fortunately, I had already planned to have my lab meeting (in picnic format) out at Yolo Basin Wildlife area and so I had to soldier on.  I scouted out the Yolo Basin in the early AM (after dropping my mom off at the airport).  And during the scouting trip I saw all sorts of cool wildlife.  Some of the pics are below:

Coyote hunting rodents off in the distance

Ring necked pheasant
And then I headed on over to where we were going to have the picnic (to make sure they were not doing any construction work near there as I had seen trucks there a few days before).  And on the way to the parking lot I saw some otter poop in the road.  It seemed very very fresh.  So I slowed down (to even less than the 15 MPH I was going) and then I saw them.



Two otters.  Just a few feet in front of me.  Playing.  They eyed me suspiciously, and then headed into the little channel.





After a brief swim they headed out on the other side.




And then they eyed me from the safety of the other side and sniffed around, scratched, pooped and did many other things.










And then I guessed they decided it was time to go back in the water.




It seemed like they were egging each other on and then decided to both go in at the same time.

And then they swam around, mostly ignoring me and headed off.


What a wonderful sighting.  And then I headed on out of the park to get some picnic food.  But I went slowly and took some bird pics along the way.  Some very nice lighting as it was still early in the AM.

Lots of avocets, which are very photogenic







And lots of white faced ibises, which, depending on the angle relative to the sun can seem drab or glorious










And a slew of other birds including ducks, herons, etc. Here are some highlights


Breeding colors for egret (see green on nose)





Pelicans





Ruddy duck couple

Ruddy duck couple

And then off to buy food and then back to Yolo Basin to meet up with my lab.  



We had a picnic.  I was too distracted to take too many pics.  Here are some I took. Will try to post some from people in the lab too.






and then went for a hike.  Didn't take too many pictures of that but here are some.  Good that 





Otter prints

Black shouldered kite

And then headed out, not before taking some more pics on the way such as this one



Oh and of course, there was some chatter on Twitter about lab meeting ... see the Storify here.





And in response to some comments on Twitter - here are a few pics with plants featured. Mostly, I note, I was focusing on animals because I had my telephoto lens on the camera and did not switch until the very end of the day to a macro lens.