Don Edwards Refuge Re-visited November 2008

We got talking to somebody else who was bird spotting and he was kind enough to tell us that there were a couple of barn owls nesting under the eves of one of the barns. The photos are awful as I was trying to take a photo of a bird in a very dark place, but you can see very clearly that it is a barn owl. This does beg one very important question - where did barn owls live before there were barns? Maybe they evolved with the advent of barns.

OK - enough contemplating and back to the day out. There's a little walk around the marsh as you enter the refuge. It's actually the one we did last time and it seems to get overlooked by everyone as we've never seen anyone else on the path either time we visited. Even after seeing the hawk and barn owl, that wasn't everything. On this little path, we passed a gray fox curled up in the sun. He didn't seem to mind us as we walked by and took a few pictures. I'd say that was the highlight of the day, but I did get to take some better pictures of a northern harrier (better than the ones I took at Las Gallinas a few weeks back, but still not brilliant) and then ended the day as it started with another red-tailed hawk.

Wildlife list as follows:

Red-Tailed Hawk
Northern Shoveler
Greater Yellowlegs
American Avocet
Bufflehead
Least Sandpiper
Sanderling
Ruddy Duck
Double-Crested Cormorant
Scrub Jay
White-Crowned Sparrow
Barn Owl
Great Egret
American Coot
Gray Fox
Song Sparrow
Mallard
Snowy Egret
Northern Harrier
California Ground Squirrel

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