Date: 1/19/26 9:45 pm From: Glennah Trochet via groups.io <trochetj...> Subject: [centralvalleybirds] Sacramento County birds this holiday weekend
Dear Birders,
I made two visits to a private ranch in far southeastern Sacramento County this weekend. On Saturday, dense fog in town gave way to clear skies at the ranch and widespread frost. I did a more usual (for me) route among watered, wooded ravines on the east side of the ranch and over grassy benches between the drainages. Perhaps the least expected thing was a western meadowlark whose song was amazingly like a male American wigeon's call! Other highlights among the birds were these: ferruginous hawk- 1 Lewis's woodpecker- 12 phainopepla- 2 mountain bluebird- 4 purple finch- 22 vesper sparrow- 1 I also saw one *Batrachoseps* salamander.
Today I accompanied Zane Pickus as we scoped out possible sites in the grasslands where he might do some field research for the wildlife museum at UC Davis. I was more focused on showing Zane where I'd seen interesting things in the past than finding birds in the dense fog. But his sharp eyes enabled us to see a handful of things of note: ferruginous hawk- 3 burrowing owl- 1 merlin- 2 Lewis's woodpecker- 15
