dip: [dip] - verb:
(used without object)
- to plunge into water or other liquid and emerge quickly: The boat dipped into the waves.
(used with object)
- to not see the bird you came to see: We dipped on the slaty-backed.
I get lots of experience in the latter. Remember last week when I was writing about a glorious day at Bodega Bay? It started with a quest for what would have been a lifer - a Slaty-backed Gull who'd been hanging out in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. Others shared our quest.
There were gulls, that was a hopeful sign. Lots and lots and lots of gulls, for a challenging "needle in a haystack effect". We scanned the area around the beach and docks, where it had originally been seen. Others were scanning below the bridge, and soon gave a shout that they thought they had the bird. We scampered over and joined the scene you see in the intro. See the left-most guy with the white hat? Well if you could see through him, you'd get a sense of where the bird was see - in a surge pool among those rocks below the bridge, right at the end of the land.
Here's a super-zoomed-in view of the search area. See those gulls in the water behind the rocks, below the flying gull? There. And the most fun part about this half-mile-away needle in a haystack gull was that everytime a wave rolled through, it pushed the gulls behind the rocks. So just as you kinda got a glimpse of a possible candidate, it was swept from view, and all the birds re-emerged from behind the rocks in a different order, if they bothered to re-emerge. A few times, I caught a glimpse of a bird that looked pretty good for Slaty-backed, but there was just no way to be sure. I came to my senses and said the hell with it, and looked at some of the other birds. This lifer would just have to wait until next time.
Swinging the scope ever-so-slightly to the left gave us a rock covered with brown pelicans and cormorants. The pelicans are starting to get their breeding colors - bright red throat pouches, dark napes... a striking bird rendered even more striking.
The Double-crested Cormorants were starting to get their double-crests, too. In no time, birds are gonna be starting families for the year. Ah spring... even if it's a month early this year. From there, we headed to Bodega for the shorebird extravaganza that I shared with you last week. One more from that trip that I thought would fit in better here. While we were fighting the crazy wind at Bodega Head, we did see some Pelagic Cormorants on the rocks there - compare and contrast with the DC above...
At the end of our Bodega day, we stopped by Bolinas Lagoon, and got another nice compare and contrast - this time between male American Wigeon (far left) and a male Eurasian Wigeon (2nd from right). If it's a bird you'd like to see, Bolinas Lagoon is probably one of the more reliable spots, pretty much every winter.
Remember, there is another definition of "dip" that can also apply to birds. Didn't have quite as much time for birding last weekend, but did make a trip to the south bay to see my friend's mom give a talk. When it was over, we made a quick trip to Stevens Creek Park to see their resident Dippers. I usually only think of dippers as being up in Yosemite (in fact, they're one of my main targets whenever I go), so it was kind of funny to think of them being just a few miles from the heart of Silicon Valley. It was my first visit to Stevens Creek, and it was amazing how quickly we left civilization behind. In just a few miles we were wending our way up a steep rocky canyon, next to a fast moving creek. Ah, right - perfect dipper habitat.
It was a sunny day, but not much light made it to the bottom of the canyon, despite the fact that the trees were still mostly leafless. The narrow creek made it possible to get closer to the bird than we usually manage in Yosemite, but "closer" is not the same as "close". (This gave me renewed appreciation for the amazing dipper pix that realalaskan has shared these past few weeks.)
Sometimes he was out on the rocks, hunting in the stream bed. More often, he was hanging out under a small bridge that crosses the creek - and when he was down there, he was singing up a storm. I got a short clip of his song on my phone:
(Apologies to those with slow connections.)
The song is reminiscent of a thrasher, to my ears. They have a pretty loud voice for a small bird, but it's still hard to hear them above the sound of the rushing waters.
I really have to wonder if he chose the spot for its acoustics, because he wasn't singing nearly so much elsewhere.
We dipped on a bird one week, but we weren't unhappy because we still had a nice day of birding. A bird dipped the following week and we were totally psyched. Go figure.
