February - Part 2

We figured out a plan to get Terry's old Trooper without the title papers, so we headed back to Ramona to get things settled with Jackie. We went back to the Ramona Grasslands Preserve in the morning before heading over. It was just barely opening by the time we got there. 

Despite getting there early, there were still quite a few people milling around. People actually were already there, parking out on the street since the parking lot was still locked, and walking in. We initially had parked out there as well, but the ranger drove up before we left our vehicle.

I think that next to the beach, the people that come here have got to be the loudest people around. It's quite annoying. Worst thing is that they can't seem to leave you alone. They kept asking really stupid questions, like "what are you doing?" It is so obvious what we are doing, that we don't even respond most of the time. I figure it's better than giving a stupid answer to a stupid question. And the way some of them speak is almost just as bad. They have this hipster douche-bag way of making even less stupid questions sound stupid. "Did you see a bald?" or "Is that a gold?" So, in case you don't know, and we were not certain initially, but they were asking if we were taking pictures of the Bald or Golden Eagles. I know that there are eagles that fly out here occasionally, but we have not seen any yet. But you would think these people see every large raptor as some kind of eagle or something. Even the ranger had spoken to us like this.

There were a good amount of Red-tailed Hawks and Turkey Vultures everywhere, but no eagles. It takes a lot of concentration and skill to photograph some of these fast moving and sometimes very skiddish birds, so it is really disruptive to have some loud mouth moron interrupting you to ask stupid questions or scaring away a bird you were trying to capture. Sometimes they just ask you if you see anything interesting...which is pretty subjective and therefore, pointless. A big part of being out here is also to get some peace and quiet and there are very few places that you can get that anymore. It almost doesn't exist.

We finally got sick of it and headed back out. It was hot and we were irritated. It was also getting late and we needed to meet up with Jackie. As we were leaving, a huge group of horse riders were coming in. They didn't have horse trailers so they must have ridden in from a nearby ranch. There are only huge million dollar ranches out there. They were playing mariachi music on big boom boxes. The horses were not timid or well behaved. We gave them as big of a berth as we were able to but we had to exit through the same gates they were coming in on. Honestly, they looked like a bunch of Mexican Drug-lords out for a joy ride.

We finally got to Jackie's place and visited with her a while before filling out the paperwork we needed to take the Trooper. While I was there, I spent some time trying to help her sign in to her new laptop. We drove two cars home. Terry's Trooper had been sitting for quite a while. Jackie had moved it around a bit in the driveway just to make sure that the battery didn't die but didn't really drive it. When we headed out of town, I was driving behind Christian in his dad's Trooper and there was a bunch of smoke coming out of the tail pipe until we got down the hill. It seemed to run fine after that so hopefully we won't have any problems with the smog test for that thing.

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We spent the rest of the month just trying to get control of our garden. The weeds this time of year is always out of control. Occasionally, Christian and I will go out in our garden to see what birds we can capture or we will take a walk down to the meadow to practice on the wildlife out there. There are always the usual suspects and occasionally we will get lucky and capture some interesting activity or something new.

The mourning doves are now frequent visitors to our garden. At first I had mixed thoughts about that as they were extremely skiddish and made a racket big enough to scare all the other birds in sight every time we walked out. They got used to us pretty quick though and they will sit and chill when the other little birds fly away as long as we move slowly and don't get too close. Of course, we added another feeding station on the side of our house so we can see our little birds from our office window. This birding thing is getting a bit out of hand as we are now planning our garden by what plants our birds might like! 

February - Part 1

We've been slowly investigating new places to go birding, especially in our local area. We went to check out what we could find at the Chino Creek area. It did not start out very well. When we pulled up, there was a school bus in the parking lot. Apparently, the place in run by the Inland Empire Utilities Agency to teach water conservation, wastewater services and "protecting the environment." Basically, like the San Joachin Marsh, it is part of the water treatment plant. As part of the Discover the Environment and Water Field Trip, these idiots led all the kids around the park in one big group with a freakin' bullhorn! Nothing teaches and screams environmental stewardship like a bullhorn! I don't know why they can't incorporate proper environmental stewardship with actual respect and care to the world around them instead of entertaining the kids like a clown. The extra chaperones that they had didn't pay any attention to the kids or the docent and just followed along at a distance chatting amongst themselves. We saw some kids wander off here and there and no one even noticed. They eventually merged back with the group but no one even paid them any attention really. I've been a chaperone to field trips with the kids to places like the UCR Botanic Gardens and they never resorted to bullhorns to talk to the kids. It was simply ridiculous and disturbed every person and animal within hearing distance of their group. Needless to say, we probably will not be returning. It was a pretty awful experience overall.

Parts of the water looked filthy. There was not much to see. They had lots of turtles and some coots plus a few bonus birds here and there. It wasn't horrible but between the fear of these field trips and the groundkeepers driving back and forth up and down the trails pretending to be busy when they did nothing but disrupt the wildlife and the people actually trying to enjoy it, we won't be returning. It's not that close and does not have enough to recommend itself to anybody unless this was in your neighborhood.

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Terry's funeral was held on Valentine's Day. I would like to say that it went without a hitch, but the truth of it was that the bishopric there was a pain in the ass and made it very restrictive and demanding. In the end, the members of his ward stepped up to help because they were not happy with what was going on either. Despite the leadership in the ward, it worked out and the service was informal and welcoming. We were able to have a nice intimate service for his family and friends to remember him. 

Marian surprised us by showing up a the service. That was really nice. The grandkids that where there all said a few words about him which was nice. Brandon sent a video of him playing a song on his guitar from where he is currently stationed in Lithuania. There were a few other musical numbers that the family did along with the slideshow. Afterwards, we went to the actual burial and graveside dedication, returning to the church afterwards for a late lunch catered by one of Terry's favorite Mexican restaurants in town. I think overall, it turned out exactly how Terry would have wanted it for the most part.

We will miss him dearly.

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The next day, we went birding again. This time, we went back to the San Jacinto Wildlife Preserve. I can't exactly say that it is ever exactly peaceful there, but the place is fairly big with a good amount of variety of ever changing birds. It is not overly crowded and is not too far away.

It is actually one of my favorite places to go birding nearby. With lots of ponds and some wide open spaces to really showcase the beauty of the area. The only drawback is that you cannot go on Wednesday or Saturday's, which is reserved for hunting. Despite the amount of duck hunters that come here, it has not deterred the many waterfowl that frequent this area. 

There were a large number and variety of raptors out and about this day. We saw the usual Red-tailed and Red-shouldered Hawks. The Northern Harriers were also very active. We got our first sighting of a Peregrine Falcon, which was really exciting.

Towards the end of the day, we got some slightly better shots of a Sharp-shinned Hawk. We also chased down a flock of Great Egrets that came in to settle down in the trees for the night. That was kind of neat.

We were quickly running out of daylight and we were afraid that they would close the gate on us for the night. As we were heading out, we saw the murmuration of a great flock of birds that we were not able to stop to identify. There wasn't enough light left to get a shot of it and we were still not out of the gate yet, so we did not stop to watch them, which was a shame, but we had a decent day. We managed to get three more lifers.

Bolsa Chica

While we are waiting for Terry's funeral, we've been working on collecting pictures from his albums and restoring some of them to use. Aron is putting together a slide show for the service. To take a break and distract ourselves, we took a day to attempt to go to the Bolsa Chica Ecological Preserve again. Once again, both parking lots were filled. We did check out an alternative place to check out, just in case. We went to the Huntington Beach Central Park that was not too far away. It was a weekend, so it was also pretty crowded but there was an extra overflow parking lot available.

But the sheer amount of people and noise was not pleasant and made birding not really possible or pleasant. Plus, the place was pretty dirty overall and smelled pretty bad. After a while, we gave up and left in disgust. We headed back out through the way we came and found a couple of spots now available in the Bolsa Chica Preserve parking lot and decided to just stop so that Christian can check the place out finally since we have attempted it several times now.

In the parking lot, they were doing a fund raising drive but don't bother opening up the bathroom for anybody to use...so I'm not sure what they expect people to be helping to pay for. They are also already funded by our tax dollars. Later, one of the "volunteers" harassed us for being slightly off the trail on a little gravel strip. Not sure what they think that will hurt since we were just sitting quietly waiting for the birds to fly in or swim by. Of course, they didn't do anything about the kid throwing rocks into the pond...or the guy that went all the way down to the water's edge to take pictures. At a lot of these, so called preserves, it is not unusual to find people bringing their pets (not always even on a leash) and people on bikes racing down narrow trails.

What was interesting was that we saw jellyfish and even a manta ray that had gotten into the pools here. I've never seen that before. I could not quite capture the manta ray though. It was in the shadows and moved quickly from where it was visible to where it was obscured.

The great thing about Bolsa Chica is the amount of birds that come through. Plus, depending on the season, you can see lots of different birds. Even though I have been here before, we still managed to get about nine or ten new lifers. 

The bad thing about this place is definitely the parking. There isn't a whole lot available. I didn't think that it would really be a problem since I have been here twice before with the girls but that was during the week. It is definitely a problem during the weekends and is pretty much not advisable since every Tom, Dick and Harry uses these spaces, not to find a quiet place to contemplate or enjoy nature, but to use it like a local park to exercise in, talking at the top of their lungs to each other or to someone on the other side of their phones, oblivious to their environment. They also sometimes bring their kids here to play, letting them run rampant (sometimes throwing rocks in the water, frightening and disturbing the wildlife), while they chat with each other or so they can ignore their kids while they are on their phones. In the end, this is definitely what you would expect at the first park we went to, but wish they would keep out of the preserves.

Would I come back here? Probably, since there is so much to see here and I haven't even seen the whole preserve yet, even though I've been here three times now. But probably not until Christian is able to get a longer lens and definitely not on a weekend. This was one of the big reasons that Christian got me my long super zoom lens. I think it was after the first trip that Caitlyn and I took to Bolsa Chica at the beginning of this past summer that he decided to get it for me. It seemed ridiculously long and heavy but we've found that sometimes it is not even long enough to capture certain things! But the biggest problem with it is the heat haze over such a long distance often makes it difficult to focus and impossible to capture a really good image. There is not much you can do about that. There is less heat haze over a shorter focal length, but then you can't really get a big enough image to even identify it. With a long lens, you can really get up close to see something, but the heat haze is such a problem that your final image is not very good. The only thing you can do is to try to get out earlier in the morning before it gets too hot but in Southern California, there isn't a whole lot else you can do, especially this year since we haven't really had more than a few days here and there of winter-like days. Most other days feels like it is already June.