Date: 11/14/25 7:50 pm From: Glennah Trochet via groups.io <trochetj...> Subject: [centralvalleybirds] Cosumnes birds this week
Dear Birders,
Last Saturday I passed the baton to the new leaders of the Tall Forest bird survey. I have known for some time that my hearing is much poorer than it was just a couple of years ago, and I needed to let go of the reins after leading the monthly surveys there for just over 30 years. Konshau Duman and Lynette Williams Duman have taken charge. I found it both gratifying to see how readily they detected things and dismaying to learn firsthand how many birds I am not hearing anymore. The survey data should now better reflect the numbers and variety of birds actually along the route and be more comparable to my own surveys of some years ago. They wanted to start at 6:45 a.m., so I got in about 45 minutes of birding before meeting them at the gate. I picked up some owls and yellow-billed magpies we didn't subsequently get. But they picked up some things I would have missed for sure. I haven't seen their list, but we had a flyover long-billed curlew, a cattle egret, a horned lark overhead, a couple of golden-crowned kinglets, a varied thrush, a purple finch, about 10 orange-crowned warblers, a Townsend's warbler and an intergrade myrtle x Audubon's yellow-rumped warbler. I may well have failed to recall something else of interest.
On Sunday I guided a group from the Lodi Sandhill Crane Festival behind the Farm Center gate. We did something like the survey route done the previous day. We, too, had a golden-crowned kinglet, a few varied thrushes, and a couple of Townsend's warblers. Many on the outing were thrilled to have confiding cranes at close range from the vehicle windows on the meandering drive back to the gate at midday.
On Monday I returned behind the gate and visited wooded areas we didn't get to the previous two days, namely the southern Tall Forest east of Wood Duck Slough and the Bottoms west of the Tall Forest. There were a few highlights, but the birding was slow overall. Warbler Woods had a varied thrush. East of Wood Duck Slough were a white-throated sparrow and a western tanager. A Townsend's warbler was in the Bottoms.
On Wednesday I started at the TNC Barn ponds and then walked the River Walk trail. The barn ponds were very birdy. I arrived in time for the going-to-roost flight of night-herons, and not long after that, still way before sunrise, a peregrine falcon flew low over the ponds. A bulging crop suggested that it had already caught breakfast! A flock of 38 snow geese was my first encounter this season with more than one or two. A flock of 13 tundra swans was my FOS. Both sora and Virginia rails were vocal, and an American bittern (no longer an easy bird at the preserve) flushed from the edge of one of the ponds. Shorebirds included the winter seven, plus one, that being a lesser yellowlegs. The River Walk was disappointing, though I did see a drake blue-winged teal on the northernmost pond adjacent to the railroad tracks, heard a varied thrush near trail marker #15 and found a slate-colored junco among a flock of 30-35 Oregons on the south side of the riparian at the bottom of the constructed wetlands pond array.
This morning I visited the Love Shack (no mapies), Wood Duck Slough out to the river at Tall Forest Landing, and the eastern Bottoms, cleaning up some of the trails in advance of the CVBS next week. My route was not direct, since I thought I heard poachers shooting among the geese northwest of the Tall Forest. By the time I got over there there was nothing to see. Since Wednesday, the numbers of greater white-fronted geese have doubled to about 12,000 and among them was a single Ross's goose (my FOS). I heard a fly-over long-billed curlew and a Townsend's warbler along Wood Duck Slough, and a varied thrush near Tall Forest Landing. Except for the stretch around the pump station on the slough, birding was pretty slow. I ran into only one small bushtit flock all morning.
