Birdathon

Today was the Yolo Audubon spring fundraiser, when teams go out and try and see as many species of birds as possible in a 24-hour period, having persuaded family, friends and mostly coworkers whose kids’ Girl Scout cookies we dutifully bought to sponsor them per bird.

I organized a team to do the birdathon today but with a twist: we’d do the entire thing by bike.

It was a beautiful day, calm just before a front comes in. The pockets of migrants were few and far between, but we managed to come up with 76 species. After lunch there were only two of us left and we headed along the levee to the west of the Yolo Bypass. This is not relaxing riding—the gravel on the levees is uneven and difficult, but we discovered that it’s possible to go from our house all the way to the Bypass avoiding asphalt altogether. (That’s about 15 miles round trip.) After a barn owl in the Tremont cemetery I was ready for a nap. (We started out going in the other direction.)

Here’s our bird list for today, which I type before we go in to the compilation (I am VERY tired and will not likely be up for much of anything after we get home). Seen or heard but not countable: peacock and spectacled rubber ducky:

pied-billed grebe
American white pelican
American bittern (!!)
great blue heron
great egret
snowy egret
cattle egret
green-backed heron
black-crowned night heron
white-faced ibis
Canada goose
wood duck
mallard
cinnamon teal
turkey vulture
white-tailed kite
northern harrier
red-shouldered hawk
Swainson’s hawk
red-tailed hawk
American kestrel
ring-necked pheasant
common moorhen
American coot
killdeer
ring-billed gull
rock pigeon
mourning dove
barn owl
white-throated swift
Anna’s hummingbird
belted kingfisher
Nuttall’s woodpecker
downy woodpecker
Pacific-slope flycatcher
black phoebe
ash-throated flycatcher
western kingbird
barn swallow
tree swallow
northern rough-winged swallow
cliff swallow
western scrub-jay
yellow-billed magpie
American crow
bushtit
house wren
marsh wren
western bluebird
Swainson’s thrush
American robin
northern mockingbird
American pipit
cedar waxwing
European starling
warbling vireo
orange-crowned warbler
yellow warbler
black-throated gray warbler
Townsend’s warbler
common yellowthroat
Wilson’s warbler
western tanager
black-headed grosbeak
California towhee
song sparrow
golden-crowned sparrow
white-crowned sparrow
dark-eyed junco (Oregon)
red-winged blackbird
western meadowlark
brown-headed cowbird
Bullock’s oriole
house finch
American goldfinch
house sparrow