San Joaquin Birding

April 10, 2011. Continuing our refuge-hopping weekend, we traveled north from Los Banos on Highway 165 to visit the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge. Across from the Great Valley Grasslands State Park, there was only one entrance in. The other entrance, which would have taken us to the Tule Elk Tour Route, was closed; presumably from flooding. We had hoped to see tule elk, especially since this time of year they are calving, but none were seen. We did see a lot of wetlands, filled with water birds and waterfowl, and great opportunity to get video for the bird documentary I will someday produce. It's always fun to videotape cool animal behavior. The red-winged blackbird puffed his bright orange-red epaulets in perfect timing with his gurgly song "o-ka-leeeee" (flash on the leeeee). Coots bobbed their little heads up and down as they swam between shovelers and teals. Avocets foraged, killdeer scurried about, and black-neck stilts carried on with their high-pitched, loud, and continuous mating calls, "yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip..." Mallards made dramatic entries as they slid from the air onto the surface of the water.

Subway sandwiches provided us with a fine picnic next to the large groups of dunlin, least sandpipers, and stilts. Then we hiked into a swamp, listening to the chattering of marsh wrens and the songs of sparrows and meadowlarks. A swamp in California? A swamp is not usually thought of as California habitat. We're used to seeing swamps in Florida or Georgia, and watching for the tops of alligator heads as they emerge from the surface of the water. It's been a very wet year, and we might think of this swamp as an anomaly, but in reality there are over 90 swamps throughout the state. No alligators here, but the soaring of raptors and warbling of warblers made this swamp feel very much alive.

We were traveling home towards the Sacramento area, and stopped at the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge. The Pelican nature trail was mostly closed due to flooding of the San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Tuolumne Rivers, which converge here at this refuge. This convergence makes the refuge an important area for sensitive and endangered species that depend on the riparian habitat, which is being restored through a multi-agency effort, after much of it was degraded by agricultural and human development use. We walked part of the trail towards the river; and though we didn't spot any endangered species, we were accompanied by a lot of black-tailed jackrabbits, either freezing on the trail ahead of us or bounding this direction or that, adults and young alike. One juvenile with large dark eyes and a round fluffy white tail was curious enough to walk right up to our feet, then was smart enough to bound into the trees at the sound of Chris' voice. Other rabbits were seen following a small group of quail. This little circus occurred a few meters ahead of us on the road-sized trail, moving along the road as we moved. The quail lazily crossed the road, stopping to pick at a morsel on the ground, then moving on, back and forth, and the rabbits circled around them.

It was a Sunday evening which meant we could not stay much longer in the serenity and calmness of a natural refuge. We had to forage ourselves, for a decent restaurant in Stockton, and return to the madness of our human habitats.