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.

January

It's been a difficult start of the the year so far. Christian's school had another lock down at his school towards the end of the school day. It's been the third time this school year. One was a live shooter situation. No shots were fired but they did find a kid on campus with a gun. One was a swatting call. This last one was maybe the same but it was weird because people from two schools in the same district were reporting shutdowns at about the same time. We couldn't find anything in the news and everybody seemed to have gotten a different story. Somebody had said that it was something actually going on across from the school at a restaurant. But that didn't explain the other school. Someone said a bomb threat, but why would you lock all the students in the school if there was a bomb threat...talk about stupid. In the end, some people just said it was another swatting call, but they didn't ever seem to have any official story in the end, which is suspicious.

Christian's dad had been in and out of the hospital for some time...he's had many complications since his initial surgery back in July of 2025. He's had strokes, seizures and all kinds of problems. Jackie wasn't really able to care for him and he ended up in an Acute Nursing Facility in November. He was able to return home in December but he wasn't doing well. We were not sure that he was going to make it to the end of the year, but he hung on. The last time we saw him, he was fading away and in pain most of the time. He didn't make it through the week. His wife wanted to wait to bury him on Valentine's Day for some reason.

While all this was going on with Christian's dad, his mom had knee replacement surgery. Aron had spent a week up there helping her out. Her cousin helped the week after that. As she was recovering, she had been dealing with a lot of abdominal pain. Aron made her go back to the hospital and ended up getting emergency gall bladder surgery...which is what Terry had at the beginning of all this mess.

The last weekend of the month, we were scheduled to go see my mom for her birthday. We ended up keeping that appointment since my sister was expected in town and Christian and I would not be available later anyway. Wendy wanted to go out to the park, so we planned a picnic. I looked for a park that we could go to that we could also do some birding. There were a couple of little parks nearby but with very little parking. Christian and I went out early to do our birding while we waited for the rest of the family to arrive.

We arrived to the first park and there was no parking at all. We called the rest of the family to let them know what was going on while we investigated the second park. That one was packed as well. We ended up just meeting them at a local park down the street from my mom. There were only a few parking spots there as well. Apparently all the Chinese gather there to do their exercises like the old Auntie's back in China. They clogged up most of the little park. By the time the rest of my family got there, there were some more parking spaces available since one of the exercise groups had just finished up. There wasn't much to do there but we tried to make the best of it.

None of the grandkids were available except for Christopher. He set up some new toys he brought, so that was kind of fun. It was pretty hot out.

Afterwards, on our way home, we ran into bumper to bumper traffic. So we got back off and decided to go look at the first park again, thinking that we could take a look around and get out of the traffic, but it was even more crowded than it was in the morning. We ended up just getting back on the road further down the way and headed home. 

We are finding it very difficult to find anywhere to go anymore. There are just too many people out and about everywhere. It is pretty miserable.

In Memoriam

On Thursday, January 29, 2026, Terry Vaughn Caldwell (78 years old), passed away after enduring a series of various health issues and complications.

He was born April 24, 1947, in Tooele, Utah. His father, Robert Denzil Caldwell was a cattle rancher, and his mother, Nora Mae Oakey was a housewife and sometimes schoolteacher. The family moved to the Bitterroot Valley (Corvallis, Montana) with their cattle as a young boy, where he graduated from Corvallis High School in 1965.

Upon graduation, he joined the US Air Force during the Vietnam War and was sent from his home in Montana, to serve at George Air Force Base in Victorville, California for 4 years.

He trucked hay for various farmers while attending the University of California Davis among other jobs. He married Cheri Ann Lenhert in 1970. In that same year, while working in a mine, he was blown up one month before his first child, Toni Ann, was born. This led to a long recovery and eventually a poor outcome from a prolonged surgery this last summer.

After graduating from University of California Davis with a Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry in 1975, he began a 36-year career as a forensic chemist working for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Terry was a life-long member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Terry’s testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was enduring, and he knew the scriptures and the Gospel well. He served the Lord in many ways including many years as a Finance Clerk. He taught his children at home with weekly family meetings and how to study the scriptures. He also instilled in his children to serve others, an appreciation for good music, good books, an honest hard day’s work, and that an education was important, but that you probably will not get it at school. Terry was a man of strong opinions, a man of many words, and he spoke with passion about things he cared about.

He found joy and pain in politics, family history, listening to music, playing the guitar and singing, good books and poetry, guns, surfing, and studying the scriptures. He is even published. After his retirement from the DEA, he wrote a book called “Chasing the Dragon.”

He married Cheri Ann Lenhert in 1970. They had 5 children (Toni, Christian, Aron, Mark and Garth). He later married two more times. Always the optimist, he didn't exactly have the best judgement in women.

Terry leaves behind his third wife of 21 years, Jacqueline Briscoe, his children from his first wife Cheri Lenhert: Toni Cantrell (Pierson), Christian Caldwell (Wileen), Aron Hafen (Kraig), daughter-in-law Danielle Sones Caldwell (Mark), thirteen grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren, and his sister Linda (Thomas) Caldwell-Mitchell.

He was preceded in death by two of his sons, Garth Caldwell, and Mark Caldwell, sister Carol Caldwell, his brother Tony Caldwell, and sister Anne Campbell. Terry Caldwell wanted to be remembered for loving the Lord, doing his duty at church as best as he could, and wanting to keep his family on straight and narrow path.

Funeral services will be held on February 14th at 10:30 at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints located at 527 9th St. Ramona, California.

Ramona Grasslands

Towards the end of the month, we went for a visit with Christian's dad. He was going to be busy in the late morning and we didn't want him to change his schedule. His wife hired a companion to take him out for a walk and chat with him. We decided to head over to the Ramona Grasslands to do some birding beforehand. This was basically Christian's backyard during most of his childhood in Ramona while they were building their house. This was also before this was even made into a Preserve.

The place seemed fairly crowded but since we needed to kill some time, we proceeded into the Preserve.

The place was beautiful, but the peace was definitely broken up by a steady stream of loud mouthed idiots. Talking, yelling, gossiping at the top of their lungs, oblivious to their surroundings. I wish these people would take their walks in the mall or at least some normal public park, as it would be more fitting. There was even a drugged out weirdo talking to himself as he plodded down the trail.

The place was certainly beautiful but difficult to enjoy with the constant interruptions. We found one spot that was just teaming of all manner of animals. It was really neat. The most abundant bird in the park seemed to be the Acorn Woodpeckers. There seemed to be a whole flock of them there. The most elusive was the Western Meadowlarks. You could hear them, but they were pretty difficult to capture. We did get a few pictures of them but by in large, most were nearly invisible.

By the time we finally got a little more comfortable there and found a side trail that was a little less crowded, we discovered that it was getting late and we had to make our way back out for our visit with Terry.

We did not have a very productive visit. Terry was barely conscious most of the time. We spoke to him on and off briefly, tried to make him comfortable. He is practically skin and bones at this point. Christian just tried to talk to him so that he can hear his voice but Jackie kept prattled on half the time asking Terry inane questions over and over and not listening enough to hear his answers. We hoped that she would have taken the opportunity to go do something else while we sat with Terry but she never did. She had only left momentarily in the very beginning but we had to call her back because Terry wanted to sit up and we didn't know how to move him without hurting him.

At some point, Terry seemed to just want to sleep, so we left him to it. They had wanted us to take his Trooper away but they didn't have any of the paperwork to go with it and we didn't want to take it without being able to do anything with it and so we left it there.

It was just a very frustrating and heartbreaking situation. His decline over this past year has been crazy. I feel that most of his health issues were exacerbated by lack of proper care starting with his heart problems during the pandemic. At this point, we know that he does not have much longer on this earth.

San Joachin Marsh

One weekend, we decided to go in search of shorebirds and decided to go to the Bolsa Chica Ecological Preserve. Unfortunately, when we got there, there was no parking. There are two parking lots and both were not just filled but double parked. We didn't know what was going on. They must have been having some event that we were not aware of. We tried to search for access at some of the other marshes along the beach without much luck. The beaches were packed as well as we were having more summer like weather.

We ended up back at the San Joachin Marsh, otherwise we might have just had to turn around and go home. 

We did not spend quite as much time at the first pool this time and managed to get through more of the Sanctuary. We found five more lifers along the way.

We brought our lunch but we had left it in the car. At some point, we were hungry and thirsty and was working our way back to the car, but we kept getting distracted with some bird or other so it took quite some time for us to actually make it back to the car.

San Jacinto Wildlife Area

While Christian was still on his break, we decided to go back to the San Jacinto Wildlife Area. When we got there, we found out that it was "technically" closed for hunting. Apparently, they are closed both on Wednesdays and Saturdays for hunting and fishing. The last time we went was on a Saturday afternoon. We did hear gunshots but we thought that the hunting area was in a different section near the gun club only. Apparently not as the place was swarming with hunters in camo.

No one seemed to mind that we were there and since we drove all the way out there, we decided to take a quick look around and see the lay of the land. We stayed on the driving trail and drove through past where we were last time, looking for the lake access. We saw groups of hunters walking around or setting up their blinds. We saw a few birds here and there and mostly stayed in the car to snap a few pictures but we did get out at the first pond when we were done to walk a bit as there were no hunters in this area.

So, despite not staying long and not really being able to get out of the car most of the time, we still managed to get some nice pictures and collected four lifers to boot! One day, we need to make it out here on a day that is not for hunting!