The posies were great; I’ll get some pix onto my Flickr account RSN.
The Chimney Rock trail (an area known to us old birding farts as “The Fish Docks") on Point Reyes is just south of the Lighthouse point there, the crest of a long spit that’s going to be an island in a few decades. Out on the end the plants are short and wind-pruned and the wildflower variety and plenitude are incredible. Halfway there, the skinny path traverses a band of knee-high grasses and mostly deep-blue native iris, with cow parsnip and checkermallow and manroot vines and dwarfed salal, the odd violet or buttercup. Landward of that, it goes under or over, depending on which branch you take, a windbreak of old Monterey cypresses around the park ranger residence.
The Pacific and common loons are migrating north, and they flew over and under and around us all the while, many in their spiffy summer plumage. There was some sort of social turmoil going on among the ravens; there’s been a resident pair there for awhile, but there were eight or ten hanging around the first set of cliffs, arguing and/or stunt-flying and/or chasing. Maybe this happens every spring; maybe they’re all related—ravens are known to go a-visiting each other—or maybe it’s recruits from the youth gang that hangs out not far inland. The pigeon guillemots are back to breed; the pelagic cormorants are all dressed up in their white bars and filoplumes. A Canada goose was roosting, maybe even nesting, on the wide grassy mesa on top of one of the offshore rocks and only one gull of the usual mob was up there, looking a bit uncomfortable on the very edge of the field.
Savanna, white-crowned, and song sparrows were singing and popping up out of the vegetation. Black oystercatchers were setting up borders, I guess; two pairs and one other (rival? visitor? offspring? ally? referee? nosy neighbor?) chased and flew patterns together and carried on loudly over the water. Surf and white-winged scoters, western-type and smaller grebes, scaup, the usual-suspect ducks were scattered over the water and flying over in packs.
From the parking lot I saw a peregrine fly out toward the point. There are a couple of those in residence too, and we see them sometimes. Didn’t see one again till we were on the outer third of the path, when we heard one yelling falcon imprecations at another; both rose from the oceanside cliff; then one disappeared back there and the other came toward us (and the three or four other humans strung loosely along the path) at about head height and just a couple of feet to our left. Stunning. A minute or two later, probably the same bird returned and swept across the path under us, maybe ten feet ahead and a foot off the ground, before vanishing over the cliff. “I rule the sky and the sky starts at your feet!” Point taken.
In other good news, a pair of bushtits is building a nest on the Lady Banks rose just outside our kitchen window.
Posted by: Ron Sullivan