I drive past Laguna Blanca in Hope Ranch every day and have observed the water level getting lower and lower & the bird numbers going up.The center of the lake is now dry. Today I brought my scope down to take a look and there was quite a nice variety. There was a curious lone male Wigeon species preening on the far side of the lake near the island. It had a very pale bald pate barely showing. There was no evidence of green on its face that I could see. The bird was mostly grey on top of its body and rufous on the sides, with a white belly. Perhaps it was just in eclipse plumage. Wigeon sp, Mute swan, Killdeer, Semipalmated Plover, Coot, Yellowlegs, Dowitcher, Western Sandpipers, Black-necked Stilt, American Pipit, many Pied-billed Grebes, many Snowy Egrets, Great Egret, Great Blue Heron, immature Black-crowned Night Heron, Mallards, Gulls, Black Phoebe, Red-shouldered Hawk, and dragonflies. Its definitely worth a look. Meg White Hope Ranch Get Outlook for Android |
v1.35 - 11/22/22 - Finally rewrote code to handle new Groups.IO web structure v1.30 - 01/05/16 - Revamped cloud logic, optimized database queries, linked to eBird rarities. v1.23 - 12/08/11 - Added direct link to CBRC records. v1.22 - 12/03/11 - Corrected GMT offsets on dates. Added last 5 posts at top. v1.21 - 11/24/11 - Added direct link to range map for NA birds. v1.2 - 11/23/11 - Greatly improved graphing technology - separates month vs. year by posts. Added species auto-complete functionality. v1.14 - 11/22/11 - Added cloud bubble for common thread topics. v1.13 - 11/22/11 - Added integrated photos where available. v1.12 - 11/22/11 - Added multiple input boxes for additional refinement, negative search criteria (eg. -keyword). v1.11 - 11/22/11 - Added banding code, species look-up. Also direct link to recent eBird observations. v1.1 - 11/22/11 - Added 'date' functionality. Shows top 'month/year' combinations for a query. Restrict results to that 'month/year'. v1.0 - 11/21/11 - Initial version coded. Currently archiving 'lacobirds' and 'calbirds'.