Wednesday, March 02, 2005

BMB05/11 Indio Hills and Anza Borrego

Monday 7th March Indio Hills Wild Flowers. A repeat of last year's first flower walk, meet for car pool at Big Morongo, 7.15am and T/A Truck Stop (Burns Bros) at 8am. Bring water and a snack; we have no good feel for timing and will play it by ear.

Monday 14th March Anza Borrego. Intended as part of Anza Borrego hawk watch, very much with Swainson's in mind, but hopefully including interesting flowers. Meet for car pooling at Big Morongo 6.30am, T/A Truck Stop (Burns Bros) at 7am. Bring water and a snack; we expect to be back by lunch time.

We had a good walk this morning with twenty five birders (including three part-timers who left for the docent course). We saw 37 species including the Red-naped Sapsucker, several Lawrence's Goldfinch and one male Summer Tanager. Wonderful weather, and Spring is really on the way - and the Vermillion demonstrated that!

Your scribe visited Cibola last weekend and if you need to see Sandhill Cranes it has to be a good place to go. I saw close to a hundred in Alfalfa fields and flying, and dancing - quite a sight, with many Cattle Egrets mixed in.. Also lots of Kestrels, Meadowlarks, Cowbirds and zillions of GT Grackles. Many blackbirds mostly Red-wing and quite wonderful Yellow-headed. Interesting that the Cottonwoods there are fully leafed, and way ahead of those at Big Morongo.

Good Birding...........bb

Barry Parkes
bbparkes@ix.netcom.com
bigmorongobirders@earthlink.com