Click on it and go to Large (the “All Sizes” button on top of the photo).
This female American redstart was maybe the hottest bird we saw today. Also one of the two or three speediest. Fortunately she kept fanning her tail and showing her fieldmarks. We saw her in the cypresses on the road to the lighthouse at Point Reyes, along with a willow flycatcher, at least one yellow warbler, a Townsend’s warbler, a phoebe, and a gang of song sparrows and white-crowned sparrows of various ages. Tricolored blackbirds in the Nunes Ranch flock, and a collared dove there too IIRC; phalaropes on the Mendoza Ranch pond; another yellow warbler along with the usual gulls and ravens and a white-winged dove at Drake’s Beach; cliff swallows, American goldfinches, bluebirds, and an unusually photo-ready chickadee at the RCA station. More redtails than usual, along with all those other migrants. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few. We were long overdue for a day out.
Hanging off the edge of the continent there was the only way we could think of to get some actual air. It was sunny and mildly breezy; hot as all hell on the way there and back and I’m sitting by an open window at quarter to nine at night, doing nothing more strenuous than typing, and sweating like a cold beer.
Posted by: Ron Sullivan