Birds From The Last Few Days

My days were winding down on SEFI and the hopes of grandeur dwindled---less days left meant less chances of some crazy mega-vagrant flitting into the Rixford Tree or scrounging for micro-bugs at the lighthouse. The days went by and very few birds showed up. I was happy with the birds that did and ecstatic for the one special seabird that showed up, so it wasn't too bad bird-wise at the end of the season.

One of my favorite birds from the Eastern Sierra (they are all over, but I grew to love them there), the Warbling Vireo.

The Vireo takes off.

A rare island migrant, a Green-tailed Towhee. This bird stayed for at least a week.

A Western Flycatcher noms a beetle in the Coast Guard Tree.

Same bird, extra curious.

One of the few dozen Black Turnstones.

A terrible photo of a Blue Grosbeak through a window with a screen on it. If it hadn't been for the window it could have been a delicious crush.

On the Thursday before I left, the seabird we'd all been waiting for finally showed up on the island. There had been reports of Blue-footed Boobies up and down the California coast (and inland, the first sighting was in August at Mono Lake, and there are at least a dozen BFBOs seen at the Salton Sea) and we knew one had to show up on the island at some point. No one had ever seen a Blue-footed Booby on the Farallones before, so it was an exciting thing to anticipate. We all had Booby fever, constantly scanning every rock perch and feeding flock for this sub-tropical Sulid. After days and days of tiring anticipation, one arrived in the late afternoon, perched on Saddle Rock and preened for 30 minutes. We all rushed out with scopes and cameras and watched the first island record Blue-footed Booby preen amongst the Cormorants. It was too far for great photos, but here is one I got from far away, and one I "tried" to digiscope...looks more like an abstract painting.