From south-bay-birds-bounces+south-bay-birds-archive=[[email protected]] Tue Nov 9 17:08:24 2004 Received: from www.plaidworks.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by plaidworks.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id iAA15kjl018159 for <[[email protected]]>; Tue, 9 Nov 2004 17:05:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from pony1pub.arc.nasa.gov (pony1pub.arc.nasa.gov [128.102.31.41]) by plaidworks.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id iAA14gVC018120 for <[[email protected]]>; Tue, 9 Nov 2004 17:04:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from [129.99.140.17] (HELO mail.arc.nasa.gov) by pony1pub.arc.nasa.gov (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 4.1.8) with ESMTP id 14891798; Tue, 09 Nov 2004 17:04:36 -0800 Message-ID: <[[email protected]]> Date: Tue, 09 Nov 2004 17:04:43 -0800 From: Mike Rogers <[[email protected]]> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: birders <[[email protected]]>, Mike Rogers <[[email protected]]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Subject: [SBB] Red Crossbills etc. at Henry Coe SP X-BeenThere: [[email protected]] X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5b1 Precedence: list List-Id: South Bay Birding List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: south-bay-birds-bounces+south-bay-birds-archive=[[email protected]] Errors-To: south-bay-birds-bounces+south-bay-birds-archive=[[email protected]] All, With rain predicted for the next few days, I decided that I'd better get a look at the Henry Coe crossbills at mid-day today 11/9/04. I took the Monument Trail up to the Ponderosa Trail and followed it out to "Vista Point". The entire area was very birdy, with 28+ RED-BREASTED NUTHATCHES and numerous RED CROSSBILLS almost continuously audible among the more expected species (in answer to Bob's question, both of these species are not typically present in such numbers or even at all - it is an "invasion year" for both locally). The largest single flock of RED CROSSBILLS that I saw contained 44+ birds, seen heading east from Eric's Bench at 1:33pm. Sixteen minutes later, 41 of these birds were seen heading back west. On the way back down the Monument Trail twenty minuutes later, Mike Pollack and I observed another flock of 20 RED CROSSBILLS flying between pines across the drainage below the trail - these may well have been a different group of birds. By tracking where these flocks (and other smaller groups) landed, I was able to get excellent looks at many of the birds. As others have noted, there are many adult males in these groups. In the flocks I was able to study closely, over half the birds were males (or maybe they are just the birds that like to stand guard up on top)! Other birds of note included 5+ GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETS, 3+ HUTTON'S VIREOS, several HAIRY WOODPECKERS, 2 RED-BREASTED SAPSUCKERS, a flock of 60+ BAND-TAILED PIGEONS eating berries, 4 CEDAR WAXWINGS, and an immature GOLDEN EAGLE. A pair of feral MUTE SWANS was on Anderson Reservoir. Mike Rogers _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. south-bay-birds mailing list ([[email protected]]) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://www.plaidworks.com/mailman/options/south-bay-birds/south-bay-birds-archive%40plaidworks.com This email sent to [[email protected]]