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On Sunday I headed up to the Antelope Valley to look for Le Conte’s Thrasher and Sage Thrasher with some friends. Upon arriving at the Le Conte’s Thrasher location I spotted a Prairie Falcon perched on a Joshua Tree:

Prairie Falcon

We scoured the washes and bushes for thrashers but yielded nothing. We did find a nice adult Yucca Night-Lizard under a piece of wood:

Yucca Night-Lizard

Joshua Trees in Palmdale

Not finding any Thrashers we headed over to Piute Ponds to continue our search and to also try and find the 3rd year Lesser Black-backed Gull and 1st year Glaucous Gull that found there earlier in the week. We met up with Stan Gray who had been there all morning without finding the Gulls. By now the wind was starting to pick up so our hopes of finding any Thrashers were quickly diminishing. The recent rains also made it a bit tricky to navigate the unmaintained dirt roads around the ponds. While we were trying to determine the best way to avoid getting stuck in one of the many ditches a beautiful adult Red-tailed Hawk made a few passes over us.

Red-tailed Hawk

We never did find any Thrashers on Sunday but we decided to take a more “scenic” route home through the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains. A bit of a longer route home but well worth the scenery.

San Gabriel Mountains

Moonrise over the San Gabriels

This morning I decided to look for the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker at Lindberg Park in Culver City again. The second time did the trick.

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

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Did some raptor hunting up in the Antelope Valley yesterday with a couple friends. The weather was gloomy and overcast throughout the day with rain here and there. Although we didn’t find any Rough-legged Hawks or Golden Eagle we had 1 Prairie Falcon, 1 imm. Bald Eagle, 5+ Ferruginous Hawks, 6+ American Kestrel, 2 Northern Harrier and 20+ Red-tailed Hawk.

We checked various ponds/lakes along the way where I got a few new photo birds (Hooded Merganser, Black Scoter and Lawrence’s Goldfinch). We also searched the A&G sod farms (110 St. East / East Avenue M) for Mountain Plovers and any Longspur sp. but to no avail. We did see hundreds of American Pipit, Horned Lark and Killdeer though.

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Kept it local this week by checking out Piute Ponds (on Edwards AFB) and Lancaster Sewage Ponds in the Antelope Valley on Saturday. Sunday I birded Talbert Marsh and Bolsa Chica in Orange County. Main target birds were: Semipalmated Sandpiper, Baird’s Sandpiper, Common Tern, Gull-billed Tern and any other early fall migrant surprises. I didn’t find any of them…. Here are some highlight photos I took though:

Black-crowned Night Heron

American Avocet Chick

Snowy Egret

Belding’s Savannah Sparrow

Forster’s Tern

California Quail

Here are a couple backyard shots taken earlier this week:

Next weekend I’ll be heading to the San Jacinto Mountains, San Jacinto Wildlife Area, Mystic Lake and Big Morongo Valley Wildlife Preserve.

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