Date: 9/29/26 10:15 am From: Glennah Trochet via groups.io <trochetj...> Subject: [centralvalleybirds] southeastern Sacramento County yesterday
Dear Birders,
Knowing that I was in for a long Monday, I left Konshau and Lynette's Sunday survey before the visit to the shack. So I missed the evening grosbeak!
Yesterday I had permission from the landowner to visit Howard Ranch, a private property in far southeastern Sacramento County. This was not the visit that I hoped for. But it was a wonderful day. It was my first visit since January, when I showed Zane Pickus a few spots that may have been of interest to his grasslands birds study. But this time around I was not permitted to drive the ranch roads out of concern of the ranch foreman for the fire danger there. I was stunned by the luxuriant standing crop of grasses and forbs, the best I've ever seen there, so the caution was justified. But that meant a long walking day, just under 13 hours. It also required an early start.
An owl was my first target. I brought a flashlight, but the moon cast hard shadows and rather brightly lit the ground when I started walking at 4:15 a.m. There was lightning in the clouds over or beyond the Sierra crest. Coyotes engaged in a songfest at 4:40. It took me 45 minutes of fairly fast walking to get to the oaks and buckeyes on Goshawk Ridge, where I have successfully whistled up northern pygmy-owls in the past, always in October if I recall correctly. But I failed on that score yesterday. I heard one distant great horned owl and two close western screech-owls; no nightjar. While waiting in vain I watched ground fog materialize out of clear air, despite a decent breeze out of the east.
My diurnal targets were birds of this season's western montane exodus, so I walked the "high country" of the eastern boundary. I found a few red-breasted nuthatches, not a new species for me at the property, but none of the others.
I made my way south over a succession of ridges to the flats south of Eaton's Knob, which had nearly a monoculture of vinegarweed on the southeast slope. Most of the grasslands had some tarweed, and many expanses had a dense growth of the stuff. My rubber boots were covered with tarweed sap by the end of the day, a smell that I really like but that my spouse found repulsive.
I had three lesser nighthawks, one before sunrise, one flushed from grass early in the morning and one flushed from a low blue oak limb late in the afternoon. Not surprisingly for the route that I took, raptors weren't featured. But I had a brace of red-shouldered hawks and a merlin that appeared to be of the nominate race. I had 97 Lewis's woodpeckers when I emerged from wooded habitat in mid-afternoon to begin the long walk to the car through the grasslands, so I made a detour to an impoundment (dry) surrounded by oaks. There I pushed my total to 102 for the day. They were still well outnumbered by acorn woodpeckers, all taking advantage of an enormous blue oak acorn crop this season. There is a nice stand of California coffeeberry on the northeast side of Eaton's knob. It's got lots of fruits this year. In past good fruiting seasons it's been a reliable spot for phainopepla and purple finch, but they were no shows this time around. In their stead was a California thrasher, only my second on the Sacramento county side of the fence there. Less than a mile into Amador County there are nice stands of chaparral hosting these. I maybe had a Lawrence's goldfinch flyover at the springs north of the knob, but I heard it only once and could not pick out anything overhead from the hundreds of floaters that now confound my views of clear skies. The sparrows that I hope for mostly evaded notice, but I did turn up one vesper sparrow. Their "usual" spot is now being taken over by yellow star thistle, so you now need to walk even farther south. But two other species were at the same densely overgrown watering spot southeast of Horseshoe Lake. A green-tailed towhee was with two grasshopper sparrows there. Walking back to the car in the grasslands, I picked up burrowing owls, one each on the Laguna Formation and the other about one-third of the way from Hadselville Creek back to the gate at Highway 104.
But the best find of the day was not a bird. I finally saw *Phrynosoma blainvillii*, a coast horned lizard. I knew that they were there because TNC grasslands biologists working there in about 2000 found them. But before yesterday it had never been my luck to find one.
All told I walked between 15 and 16 miles yesterday. I was exhausted and went straight to bed after supper and a shower. I slept the clock around! I haven't been so sore as I am this morning in many, many years.
