0330 Laird Park

Our first stop was quite successful for owls, but completely unproductive for the rails we hoped to get here.

0500 del puerto canyon road

We spent seven hours total driving up and down Del Puerto Canyon road, first in the dark and then in the light. We turned up some interesting birds before sunrise (especially Wild Turkey at Frank Raines park). The first light of the morning was lovely, but confusion about the details of the road's mile markers slowed us down a bit.

1200 patternson sewage ponds

We left the canyon in search of water and different habitats.

1232 pond near patterson sewage ponds

1315 ceres sewage ponds
1356 san joaquin river nwr (beckwith road), mostly on the way to the pullout
1643 drive down willms + crabtree roads
1800 sunset at Turlock Lake
2100 rechecking for rails, grackles

Colusa Wildlife Refuge offered a charming driving tour of what I presume are irrigation channels, ponds, and fields of cattails. The birds were quite acclimated to cars, but flushed immediately when I got out of the car to retrieve something from the trunk. The new binoculars worked out very well. I didn't need them to see the pheasants, though -- they stood right on the road and stared at me. I saw something that looked like a Curlew dipped in coal dust, and decided it must have been some kind of Ibis, although the light wasn't good enough to see any color details.

A short drive along the river brought me to Gray Lodge Wildlife Refuge, although the number of hunters there made the term "refuge" seem a little funny. Apparently, there's a lot of people out there who think it's fun to camp out in a muddy camping lot on a Monday night in order to put their names in a lottery to earn the right to wander around in the marsh and shoot birds. Myself, I prefer to gaze on them from the comfort of my car, although these birds were a lot more skittish, and even hiding in the car didn't stop them from running away. In addition to the plentiful ducks I expected, there was a lovely two-point white-tailed deer, and some kind of marine mammal in a pond. I heard reports from two fellow birders that the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge had lots of vultures and geese, which I didn't get to see today -- perhaps I'll stop there on the way back.

The region containing these two refuges reminded me a lot of central Illinois. Very flat, roads running in straight lines, most of the land consumed by agriculture. Except that you'd see a flooded field with SEAGULLS sitting in it. That seemed really out of place!

On the way back to I5, I had the distinct pleasure of crossing the Princeton Ferry -- A platform the size of a large houseboat that pulls itself across the 50 feet of the sluggish Sacramento River for a mere 50 cents. Why not a bridge? I can only assume the river isn't always so sluggish, and must vary a lot in depth. Either that or Glenn County doesn't have much of a tax base for infrastructure.

The drive up to Weed was uneventful. I did pass by an unlit sign saying "chains required next two miles" and other sign saying "summit 3,900 feet" that reminded me that I'm _not_ in Illinois.

Tomorrow -- a marsh just north of here on I97 that is supposed to have lots of raptors and geese and stuff.