Tag: birds

For the past several weeks we have been watching a pair of nesting red-tailed hawks across the canyon. They built a nest in a eucalyptus tree, then the female began incubating a clutch of eggs. The male would bring her food and spell for short stints on the nest, while we spied on them through…

This afternoon I was enjoying the sunshine and watching the small finchy birds flitting about in the big coffeeberry bush off our back deck. I call this bush the “conference bush” because every spring the birds congregate in it and chatter to each other like conventioneers. When the bush blooms it becomes populated with foraging…

We are fortunate to have a lot of wildlife in our backyard, which is actually a canyon. On any given day we can look out and see finches and hummingbirds squabbling over their respective feeders, jays trying to steal whatever they can, and hawks either swooping through the brush or soaring overhead. The soundtrack of…

We are still about a few days away from the vernal equinox, but it is impossible to mistake the signs of spring:  Trees are blooming (gesundheit!), bees are buzzing, and birds are singing. In our canyon, the California quail have disbanded their large winter covey and are foraging in male-female pairs. In the past few…

Sometimes even a naturalist gets to go on vacation, and I was fortunate enough to get to spend a week in Kaua’i.  My favorite spot on the island was the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge on the north shore of the island, where I got to see albatrosses, frigatebirds, and boobies in flight, as well as…

The best thing about where we live is that all we have to do is walk to the edge of the back deck and we’re looking down into wild-ish nature.  I say “wild-ish” because while it is one of the natural arroyos common on the central California coast, there is a utilities access road at…