Author: Jim Gain
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Are you a Birder or Bird Photographer?
I had the opportunity to sit and chat last week for an hour with a couple of bird photographers in southeast Arizona. We were seated next to a photography blind at Mary Jo’s Ash Canyon B&B outside Hereford, AZ. All three of us had cameras with really long lenses and…
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California’s Super Bloom 2019
Upon their return from a conference in Palm Springs, some of my colleagues shared how amazing the current wild flower bloom was. It so happened that we had a family trip planned to the Riverside area during Spring Break, so I thought, why not check it out? WHAT CONDITIONS CAUSE…
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Cassin’s Kingbirds, Lawrence’s Goldfinch and Avian Eponyms
HUNTING FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION The chase began, as they usually do, with a rare bird email report from ebird on 3/14 by Emilie Strauss about a sighting of a pair of Cassin’s Kingbirds. Cassin’s Kingbirds are rare to uncommon in the county with a pretty limited distribution, mostly along the…
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A Visit from the Gray-mantled Gull of Kamchatka
In French, it is known as the Gray-mantled Gull, Goéland à manteau ardoisé. In Spanish, it is the Kamchatka Gull, Gaviota de Kamchatka. In English, we call it the Slaty-backed Gull. For those of us living in California’s San Joaquin Valley, we call it the “Extremely Rare Gull”. So rare in…
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No Butts About it, Merced NWR is for the Birds
I decided that today was a great day to drive down to the Merced National Wildlife Refuge to see what was hanging around there. The temperature looks a bit chilly (31 degrees) but there’s no fog and no rain until later on in the week. My target bird for the…
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The Raven
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, …” This post was supposed to be about Short-eared Owls, not about the embodiment of a symbolic metaphor for never-ending remembrance. THE PLAN WAS…Early yesterday morning as I saw that there was going to be a break in the…
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The Case of the Mysterious “Might-be-a-rare-bird”
Birders as a whole, can be quite passionate about their bird lists. While we still thoroughly enjoy the activities of our common sparrows and finches, it’s the rare birds that really fuel our obsession. We live for that next new addition to our beloved list. The subtleties and nuances that…
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A Walk in Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Gardens with Chiggers
After a pleasant drive down from Miami, we stopped for an afternoon stroll through the beautiful Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Gardens. I have been there twice before and I remember it being quite an active birding spot with Black-whiskered Vireos, Swainson’s Warblers and more passerine species. The weather…
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Exploring the Green Cay Wetlands
1/7/2019Today was our traveling day to Orlando and we opted to stop at the Green Cay Wetlands on our drive north. Green Cay Wetlands is a 100-acre nature preserve located north of Fort Lauderdale in Boynton Beach. The preserve was converted from farmland into a county water reclamation facility in…
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Looking for Snail Kites
1/09/19So, we were in Orlando, as a family, with plans to take our son to play the new Kingdom Hearts III Demo at Disney Springs and had a little time to kill before they opened. So of course I took the opportunity to try and see if I could espy…
Reflections of the Natural World 