Went out birdwatching at Lake Crabtree before my biofeedback appointment. (Having an elderly woman tell you that your pelvic floor muscle response is “beautiful” is a trifle surreal. However, like everything else, you gotta laugh.) Nothing new on the bird front, but a pleasant way to kill part of the morning.
Saw a magnificent osprey fishing at the lake–he actually caught something while I watched, although I didn’t see him hit the water the last time. What he came up with looked…fluffy. I don’t know if any ducks are breeding this late in the year–it’s balmy, but still definitely edging to fall–so I might just have been crazy, or or he grabbed some straw-filled muck along with his prey, or possibly he snagged one of the rare and elusive wig-fish, hunted nearly to extinction by the beauty industry in decades past.
Other than that, my highlight of the day was IDing a savannah sparrow on the spot, which doesn’t sound like much until you realize how miserable IDing anything sparrowlike is. They’re a whole tribe of identical little brown jobbies, and flipping through the bird books is like playing one of those “Spot-the-difference!” puzzles as you try to figure out who has breast stripes and dark lores and wing bars and is that a ventral spot or are you just happy to see me? At one point, I was chasing this sparrow from copse to copse, trying to get a look under its tail. Yes, I’m a perv, but not inclined towards sparrows–the underside of the tail being dark or light is the only way I could nail it conclusively between Savannah and Vesper. At last I got a good look–dark–therefore definitively a savannah sparrow. Which wasn’t a lifer, but I ID’d it in the field (albeit with much help from a very patient bird) so I was proud.
Beyond that, the usual suspects–double-crested cormorants, herons, wrens, yellowthroats, blue jays, palm warblers (one of the only warblers I am comfortable IDing at the moment, because they do a constant butt-wag that makes it a lot easier) cardinals, bluebirds, and pheobes. There was a duck, too, but I didn’t have my scope and he was way off in the distance so I couldn’t get a good look. Pity, I’m short on ducks. Oh, well, hopefully this winter…
Biofeedback’s goin’ well. I don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to hit the head any more, which is an improvement, since I have my easel erected dead in the path from bed to bathroom (it’s the best spot for the opaque projector) with the obligatory shin banging and pain and loud crashing noises, and avoiding that’s nice all by itself.
