Karen Johnson just called me (7:00 a.m.) to report her Calliope Hummingbird is BACK. Details and photos are below, just scroll down. Karen says folks are still welcome to come look for it. Just park along Route 47, walk down her driveway, and BE SURE not to trample any plants. The bird has been in the sage to left of the house as you face the house from the driveway. The bird may have "disappeared" yesterday because too many people were looking for it, so anyone looking today should be sure to be still, wear neutral colors, and give the bird plenty of room to get to the sage and other nectar plants.
About the bay - continuing my pre-dawn "study" of nocturnal migration (which is really a pilot study for next year, and a chance to sharpen some flight-call i.d. skills), hardly anything was migrating this morning so I devoted one clicker to flight notes of any description (48 total), and one to the Black-crowned Night-Heron fly-out (42). The night-heron count jived very well with yesterday's running-total-in-my-head of 38, and I also detected 2 Gray-cheeked Thrushes and one Swainson's in re-directed flight at 6:23 a.m., headed east-northeast.
But there were some differences from just yesterday - no egrets, three Great-horned Owls instead of two, a screech-owl not heard yesterday, a Seaside Sparrow in the marsh giving it's long, high zeeeeeeeeeeezz note, some Sanderlings feeding along the shore. The tide was a bit higher, the sky a bit cloudier, and it all reminds me of one of my favorite things about birding: you never know what you will see.
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