Often birding trips feature a "target species". Tomorrow I'll be heading to Panoche, where we'll be looking for eagles, ferruginous hawks and prairie falcons, mountain plovers and mountain bluebirds, long-eared owls and short-eared owls. But while we're searching for those favorites, we'll see many other species, some quite ordinary. Even though we don't ever plan a trip around them, they bring a smile every time they show up.
Cooper's Hawks are one of the three most common species that we band at the GGRO, and I've held hundreds of them over the years. Yet I don't see many of them in the field, especially when they're literally in the field. Getting a nice look at a coop perched in the open like this (rather than hiding deep in foliage or soaring high overhead) is a real treat.
My area of the San Francisco Christmas Bird Count for the past five years or so is Lake Merced, and we have two target species there - Sora and Virginia Rail. Every year, I get out well before dawn and try to hear them; our efforts continue throughout the day (especially if the dawn hunt falls short). It feels good to get the target birds because then I can kick back and enjoy the other residents - including the Black-crowned Night Herons who hang out there.
My friends and I often go looking for rare shorebirds, as we're blessed with an abundance of shoreline and mudflats nearby. But an uncommon shorebird often looks pretty much like a common shorebird, so it's good that I enjoy the regulars as well. Sure it's nice to see Greater Sandplover or Bristle-thighed Curlew or Ruff, but I always get a little lift when I see Semi-palmated Plovers. (One of the more nerd names that a bird has to endure.) I love this guy's "man on a mission" purposeful walk...
Pt. Reyes is a source of all sorts of rarities, and we end up spending a fair amount of time there year-round, but especially in the winter and fall. There have been trips for Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Bobolink and the afore-mentioned Bristle-thighed Curlew. On the way back from looking for reported Red-throated Pipits (we missed them, and they may have been mis-ID'd anyway), we stopped to search a pond and saw this perfect Pied-billed Grebe.
Point Reyes and surrounding areas also yield a few other favorites - birds that I never think "hey, I'm gonna go looking for some of those", but when I see them, I practically sing their names:
Black Oystercatcher! (I love their tweedling call!)
Pigeon Guillemot! (And did this one choose a nice spot for a nest or what?)
Sometimes it's not even the semi-common birds who bring delight, sometimes it's a very common bird doing something cool, or simply looking more elegant than usual...
Double-crested Cormorant in breeding plumage.
Osprey on a meal....
Caspian Tern on ... another Caspian Tern. (Ah, romance!)