I spent yet another fruitless morning looking for Pinyon Jays, this time along Morgan Territory Road. The only sign of the montane irruption was a Cassin’s Finch at the Diablo Bowmen archery range, otherwise all normal. I then spent the afternoon in the delta. At Clifton the winds were 30+ mph, but two Sabines Gulls were acrobatically foraging in them. Afterwards, Holland Tract was completely windless. I turned up 3 Gray-headed Orange-crowns and 3 Cranes, and watched a drone (that makes peregrine falcon sounds) chase a flock of a few thousand blackbirds around the rice fields. Most were Red-winged but I estimated that about 300 were Yellow-headed.
Yesterday, a quick afternoon trip to Landfill Loop produced a Loggerhead Shrike on the landfill’s northern edge. This species is quite rare in Richmond and this was my first sighting. This is presumably the same bird found by Susana de Trapaga here in early September.
