Black-Chinned Hummingbird

I got back yesterday from Palm Desert. The wildflowers are going to be spectacular this year. They aren’t yet, but they’re going to be. I was ecstatic about seeing several desert pupfish at Thousand Palms.

Hummingbirds everywhere — I saw a couple of Costa’s but mostly they were black-chinned. The ocotillos will be blooming soon, then look out.

Before the Storm

Bird Looking Right

Long-time readers of Bird by Bird may have noticed that i try to alternate my bird sketches to the left and right of text. This is mostly to break up visual monotony on my blog page. But I’m also always trying to have the bird facing the text, rather than looking off the page. (I can’t help it. Years of work as a designer make me notice this kind of thing as opposed to being able blithely to ignore it.)

But the problem is this: most of the birds I sketch are facing right. This doesn’t mean that most birds face right; it means that most of the ones I actually sketch are facing right. Studies have shown (and if I were writing a psych paper I’d run out there and fish out some references) that the human brain is far more likely to home in on not just the eyes of something with eyes, but the eyes looking a particular direction. This seems to change with hemispheric domination, and I’m not sure what dictates what, but my hemisphere seems to dictate that I draw birds facing right.

Photoshop to the rescue? Alas. The lower magpie is flipped in photoshop but it looks wrong to me, off, somehow, definitely off-balance. It’s very strange. You should try it.

Jackrabbit

Not a bird. Forgive me. I couldn’t resist…

White-tailed Kite

Lots of calling, hovering, fluttering these days with a pair of white-tailed kites in the pine by the office…

White-breasted Nuthatch

Barn Owl

We biked out to the Yolo Grasslands Park on Saturday to look for a long-eared owl that’s been reported out there. We didn’t find it, but this barn owl was sleeping in the eucalyptus the long-eared had been using. Since I mostly see barn owls around Davis in nest boxes (or flying low over the field looking for rodents), seeing one perching in a tree was a treat.

Friday Walk

I met the Friday lunchtime birding gang and we went to the eastern side of the Arboretum this time, hoping to find the white-throated sparrow. No luck, but we did see at least four orange-crowned warblers and a green heron that flew up and down and perched in a eucalyptus…

Great Blue Heron

I got back last night from my dentist appointment and saw a great blue heron land in the field, stalk around, and then stab something with its pointy beak. Gobble.

Northern Flicker

The wind has veered, and we’re going to be getting a few days at least with no rain. The barometer is rising. The birds come in clusters. This flicker is back to examining the phone pole…