{"id":1001231,"date":"2008-06-08T19:52:54","date_gmt":"2008-06-09T00:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/?p=1001231"},"modified":"2008-07-03T09:48:14","modified_gmt":"2008-07-03T14:48:14","slug":"425-427-at-covington-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/birding\/2008\/06\/08\/425-427-at-covington-park\/","title":{"rendered":"#425-427 at Covington Park"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday morning (2008-05-18) around 8:00 A.M. Jill drove us over to Covington Park in Morongo Valley. It&#8217;s a local hot spot. The greenery and water pull in a lot of birds at the western most edge of their ranges, plus there are feeders. <\/p>\n<p>We started with the feeders at the house across the road when I heard a woodpecker. It didn&#8217;t take us too long to locate it, and it turned out to be a Ladder-backed Woodpecker, #425. This is a Western species that doesn&#8217;t usually cross the mountains to the coast. One was seen regularly at Irvine Regional Park earlier this year, but I hadn&#8217;t really chased it and never saw it. This one cooperatively posed on a telephone pole:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/ladderbackedwoodpecker.jpg\" alt=\"Ladder-backed Woodpecker\" title=\"ladderbackedwoodpecker\" width=\"621\" height=\"580\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1001232\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/ladderbackedwoodpecker.jpg 621w, https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/ladderbackedwoodpecker-150x140.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 621px) 100vw, 621px\" \/><br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The birds I was really expecting and hoping for were Vermilion Flycatcher and Phainopepla. We saw some mourning doves, Western Bluebirds, Yellow Warblers, a Hooded oriole, and then the bird I was looking for! A Vermilion Flycatcher. Well, actually, no. This bird was all red, rather than rred with black wings. That made it a Summer Tanager. (Still a California first for me.) But almost immediately after that I spotted a real Vermilion Flycatcher male in full plumage. #426:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/vermilionflycatcher.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"vermilionflycatcher\" width=\"476\" height=\"374\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1001233\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/vermilionflycatcher.jpg 476w, https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/vermilionflycatcher-150x117.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 476px) 100vw, 476px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Then, watching some small  birds in the tree I saw an unmistakable Lawrence&#8217;s Goldfinch male, along with a likely female. These birds were moving through fairly quickly and did not stop to pose for photographs, but that still counts as #427, and my fifth life bird of the weekend.<\/p>\n<p>On the way out we added California Thrasher and Gambel&#8217;s Quail. We weren&#8217;t there probably even 45 minutes and we still managed 18 species including 3 lifers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>  \tGambel&#8217;s Quail  \t<\/li>\n<li>\tMourning Dove \t<\/li>\n<li>\tAnna&#8217;s Hummingbird \t<\/li>\n<li> \tLadder-backed Woodpecker \t<\/li>\n<li>\tBlack Phoebe \t<\/li>\n<li>\tVermilion Flycatcher \t<\/li>\n<li>\tAsh-throated Flycatcher \t<\/li>\n<li>\tWestern Bluebird \t<\/li>\n<li> \tCalifornia Thrasher \t<\/li>\n<li>\tEuropean Starling \t<\/li>\n<li> \tOrange-crowned Warbler \t<\/li>\n<li>\tYellow Warbler \t<\/li>\n<li> \tSummer Tanager \t<\/li>\n<li>\tHooded Oriole \t<\/li>\n<li>\tHouse Finch \t<\/li>\n<li>\tLesser Goldfinch \t<\/li>\n<li>\tLawrence&#8217;s Goldfinch \t<\/li>\n<li>\tHouse Sparrow \t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We drove down the road to the state park that abuts Covington Park, and spent some time at the Hummingbird feeders. I was hoping for Costa&#8217;s or Black-chinned, but all we got were Anna&#8217;s. Still 3 life birds before breakfast is nothing to sneeze at. They&#8217;re a lot of new birds out there in the desert. So far I&#8217;ve only seen a tiny portion of what&#8217;s possible. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday morning (2008-05-18) around 8:00 A.M. Jill drove us over to Covington Park in Morongo Valley. It&#8217;s a local hot spot. The greenery and water pull in a lot of birds at the western most edge of their ranges, plus there are feeders. We started with the feeders at the house across the road when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1001231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}