Central Valley

Last night was weird. I arrived at my host's house, and asked for the wrong person. I was really confused but they let me in and I sat down with 5 people watching the documentary "The Devil and Daniel Johnston". After the movie, a couple people were playing guitar, doing handstands, and arm wrestling. The beers were flowing.

I was really confused for the whole night as to who my host was. I finally figured it out about 10 minutes ago. I emailed two different people who were roommates asking to stay, both Shannon and Amanda, not knowing they were roommates. A different roommate called me on their behalf, and had a conversation about wildlife. I wrongly called her Tracey on the phone because I had asked another person on couchsurfing if I could stay in Sacramento with them who listed on her profile that she was a wildlife biologist. When I got there, the person I conversed with was not home yet. When she did get home, she did not make it apparent that I had talked to her on the phone. I thought I was at the home of a person who had emailed me back earlier in the day offering to host, that I had replied no to. It turns out I delined to one of the roommates who just wanted to send me her phone number in case she wasn't home when I got there. If you're confused reading this, then you probably understand what I felt like last night.


Anyway, this morning I got up and went ot the Sacramento Audubon Society's Bobelaine Sanctuary. It was an incredible riparian system. I spent half the day there, seeing a WESTERN TANAGER, NUTTALL'S WOODPECKER, and BEWICK'S WREN. The best part was when I was checing out a flock of BUSHTIT, RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET (which I could see the ruby for the first time!), and a few BLACK-THROATED GRAY WARBLER, I noticed an odd looking yellow-headed warbler. I lost him, but stayed with the flock for about 15 minutes. Luckily he showed himself again for a good bit, and confirmed my suspicion that he was a HERMIT WARBLER.


On my way up to Chico, I stopped at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge complex. My first stop was Colusa NWR, which had an insane amount of GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE. I also got good looks of a RING-NECKED PHEASANT here.


Just up the road, I went to Delevan NWR and Sacramento NWR. I noticed, and had to back up, for an AMERICAN BITTERN. There were also thousands of SNOW GEESE here. On the day, I would have to say that I saw no less than 100,000 GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE.

I also came across some recent research today that shows that my September 23rd posted picture of a Richardon's subspecies of the CANADA GOOSE is actually now recognized as a separate species, CACKLING GOOSE.