Pleasanton Ridge May 2010 (Is that a snake in your trousers or are you just pleased to see me?)
Memorial Day Monday so decided to go out for a quiet walk. Hmmm - anything but quiet I think. Decided to try somewhere new so went to Pleasanton Ridge. Unfortunately, I don't think this was a new place for everyone else and their dog as it was extremely busy. Not that fascinating on the bird front, although I'm really impressed with the clarity of some of the pictures given that they were taken at quite a long distance using a 300mm lens with a 1.4x converter. The one I really like is the white-breasted nuthatch. If you're interested, take a look at the full resolution picture and you can see the spider it's eating.
The walk was a really good one for me and I'm sure I'll regret it tomorrow as it was up a very steep hill, but I did come down a more gentle slope. On the way down I saw a couple of gopher snakes, one of which I managed to get a photograph of. Harmless, so I'm told (I'm not going to put that to the test), but they did seem to have a knack of slithering out in front of people and making them jump. If I'm reincarnated as a snake, I think that would be a pretty cool thing to do. Talking of interesting, when I finally got back down to the car park, there appeared to be a women's beach volley ball team going up the hill. At least there were several women in bikini's and one of them had a ball. I can only think that they were there to get some exercise walking or running up the hill as the place I was at seemed to be lacking in both a beach and a volley ball court. I didn't hang around to see what they were doing .... I left before the snake popped its head out again.
Back to the photos:
- Acorn Woodpecker
- California Towhee
- Dark-Eyed Junko
- Nuttal's Woodpecker
- Oak Titmouse
- Scrub Jay
- Spotted Towhee
- Turkey Vulture
- Violet-Green Swallow
- Western Bluebird
- White-Breasted Nuthatch
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