This is a picture looking north from Pilot Rock Road, across the Siskiyous towards Mt.McLoughlin, a Mt. Fuji-perfect volcano that rises over 9,000 feet in elevation.

We are not getting much sunshine around here these days.  Clouds and rain.  More clouds, a little more rain.  But in a rare sunny moment: this is what the glossy black back of the fresh-plumaged Brewer’s Blackbird male looks like.  The sheen of slick anthracite, reflecting like a one-way mirror.

 

 

There’s a lone female Mallard who winds down out of the sky every day or two.  She plops down in our garden and gibbles up the grain that’s been spilled out of the bird feeders she cannot reach, or is too big to land on.  Here she is just outside the kitchen window, walking beneath the clothes line.  Any time she arrives there’s plenty of staring from the other, smaller birds.  They don’t fear her, mostly curious it seems.  She usually stays for about ten minutes, then her gullet is full and she takes off before her load get too heavy, I suspect.

After the bear invasions of our garden became regular, we just took down our hummingbird feeder for the season.  How could our thin gruel nectar possibly compete with all the wealth of natural blossoms and gardenf lowers all about?  Haven’t seen a female Anna’s in a qjuite a while, but the males preen and pose in many spots about the valley.  Here’s just one:

and another:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 FOUR FEETERS

Just as we have a lone Mallard visitor, we have this one California ground squirrel that joins the larger, combative gray squirrels at our feeders.  True to his moniker he stays on the earth, never climbing the fence like hia arboreal cousins.

 

 

At higher elevations we sometimes encounter this colroful, perky character.  It is the golden-mantled ground squirrel, about a foot long with another four inches of tail.  He weighs less than a pound. 

Here are a  couple more shots of this one we found near Howard Prairie Lake Dam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 There was just one Blue Heron along the Greenway in Central Point on this week’s walk.  There was also an adult Night-heron, snoozing mid-day, largely hidden in the willows as usual.

 Here’s most of the Dennie Niebuhr troop, trooping along the Central Point portion of the Bear Creek Greenway, with a couple peering into the brush for that elusive little warbler-like sylph that got away.

 

 

Still blooming profusely in damp, shaded areas.  Pussy-ears.  Cat’s-ears.  Calochortus tolmiei.  Named for the same Dr. Tolmie for which the Macgillivray’s Warbler is named.  There were at least MacGs calling and occasionally visible on upper Granite Street this morning.

 

 

Location:     Central Point Greenway Walk
Observation date:     6/4/08
Notes:     Central Point Greenway Walk June, 2008  Cloudy and cool to mild
Number of species:     53

Wood Duck     9
Gadwall     1
Mallard     56
Northern Shoveler     1
California Quail     7
Green Heron     1
Black-crowned Night-Heron     1
Turkey Vulture     18
Osprey     4
Red-tailed Hawk     10
Killdeer     7
Rock Pigeon     20
Mourning Dove     18
Vaux’s Swift     10
Anna’s Hummingbird     3
Belted Kingfisher     2
Acorn Woodpecker     8
Downy Woodpecker     5
Northern Flicker     4
Western Wood-Pewee     16
Willow Flycatcher     3
Black Phoebe     1
Western Kingbird     2
Western Scrub-Jay     11
Common Raven     1
Tree Swallow     30
Violet-green Swallow     5
Northern Rough-winged Swallow     6
Cliff Swallow     14
Barn Swallow     7
Black-capped Chickadee     3
Bushtit     2
Bewick’s Wren     8
Ruby-crowned Kinglet     1
American Robin     1
Wrentit     6
European Starling     25
Cedar Waxwing     8
Yellow Warbler     2
Wilson’s Warbler     3
Yellow-breasted Chat     7
Western Tanager     2
Spotted Towhee     15
Song Sparrow     11
Black-headed Grosbeak     11
Red-winged Blackbird     26
Brewer’s Blackbird     16
Brown-headed Cowbird     12
Bullock’s Oriole     15
House Finch     11
Lesser Goldfinch     15
American Goldfinch     1
House Sparrow     5