Birding in the Winter Wetlands of Central California
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A Convenient Getaway for Many Californians
There are vast flat lands in California’s San Joaquin Valley west of Merced, California, where the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service maintains about 45,000 acres of habitat for migrating birds using the north-south Pacific Flyway.
A visitor center north of Los Banos, CA offers guidance on using the nearly 21 miles of one-way auto tour routes through several areas. January and February see tens of thousands of geese and other wildfowl gathering on the many flooded fields.
My husband and I recently visited on a windless, 58-degree day. There were thousands of Ross’s geese and hundreds of greater white-fronted geese and lesser sandhill cranes, as well as many other species of birds and wildlife.
I had not picked up my DSLR in years, but I wanted to return to photography.
Nearly every pond had dozens of coots and many shovelers. The ponds are too shallow for diving ducks.
Aside from the over-wintering waterfowl, black phoebes were busy everywhere; and we saw meadowlarks, loggerhead shrikes, red-winged blackbirds, and savannah sparrows. Can you find the camouflaged sparrow?
We saw many hawks perched high or swooping across an area. We came upon the remains of a recent kill.
The northern pintails were beautiful. The cinnamon teals were harder to photograph.
I got carried away photographing the many beautiful, black-necked stilts with their bubblegum-pink legs.
We found the lesser sandhill cranes avoided human visitors by remaining far from the encircling road. One would need a tripod and long lens to make sharp images of them.
