2016 12-05 Sacramento and El Dorado County
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I’ve been on the look-out for burrowing owls for a while now ever since a friend of mine, Wes, from the boat was talking about how he knows where they are so easy to shoot you don’t have to leave your car. A very helpful person named Chris from the Birding FaceBook page recommended using the maps in eBird, and showed me two that he had contributed to over the past few years. So today we went to two of these locations, one was very close to our home on Payen Road, off White Rock. The second was about 25 minutes from the first, on Meiss Road south of Rancho Murieta.
Both sites had a lot of raptors around. On Payen we were after a corrugated drain that passed under some abandoned railroad tracks. The drains we located were filled-in with sediments and grass, and no burrows were found. Continuing, we saw Merlins sitting on power lines. They would take off when we were within 100 yards and fly to the next power pole and line. One abandoned the power poles and took off to the north. It hovered a couple of times perhaps spotting prey on the ground. Towards the end of the road we spotted RC jets and other planes and came upon the El Dorado RC Aircraft runway and flight area. I often see these same aircraft from the front yard of my home, so now I know where they come from.
There were abundant turkey vultures and some red-tailed hawks. Near the intersection of White Rock and Payen there was a large dead cow with one turkey vulture and about 20 ravens sitting on the carcass. They flew off as we drove by.
As we drove from one location to another we crossed a high bridge over a small river. Sitting on a telephone wire was a huge banded kingfisher that had no intention of having its picture taken.
Moving on to Meiss Road, we found the road to run through pasture land for cows. It went from a nicely paved road, to a rough paved road, to an unpaved road as we travelled 7 miles or so. The search for burrows did not produce much. There were peregrine falcons and American kestrels here, and tons of spent shotgun shells plus orange debris from skeet shooting all over. At the end of our trek down Meiss, quite a ways down the unpaved section, we did find a small stream. Along the bank and near the road the stream had apparently cut away the soil and made a nice wall. The wall had several large holes or burrows. A triangular hole near the top of the wall had an animal inside. “Hooray,” I was thinking, “it must be a burrowing owl!” I changed my settings for shooting inside a hole and used manual focus. Then I borrowed Suellen’s binoculars after she announced that it was not an owl at all. It was a huge rabbit.
You never know what Mother Nature has in store.
Bob Perry
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Read MoreI’ve been on the look-out for burrowing owls for a while now ever since a friend of mine, Wes, from the boat was talking about how he knows where they are so easy to shoot you don’t have to leave your car. A very helpful person named Chris from the Birding FaceBook page recommended using the maps in eBird, and showed me two that he had contributed to over the past few years. So today we went to two of these locations, one was very close to our home on Payen Road, off White Rock. The second was about 25 minutes from the first, on Meiss Road south of Rancho Murieta.
Both sites had a lot of raptors around. On Payen we were after a corrugated drain that passed under some abandoned railroad tracks. The drains we located were filled-in with sediments and grass, and no burrows were found. Continuing, we saw Merlins sitting on power lines. They would take off when we were within 100 yards and fly to the next power pole and line. One abandoned the power poles and took off to the north. It hovered a couple of times perhaps spotting prey on the ground. Towards the end of the road we spotted RC jets and other planes and came upon the El Dorado RC Aircraft runway and flight area. I often see these same aircraft from the front yard of my home, so now I know where they come from.
There were abundant turkey vultures and some red-tailed hawks. Near the intersection of White Rock and Payen there was a large dead cow with one turkey vulture and about 20 ravens sitting on the carcass. They flew off as we drove by.
As we drove from one location to another we crossed a high bridge over a small river. Sitting on a telephone wire was a huge banded kingfisher that had no intention of having its picture taken.
Moving on to Meiss Road, we found the road to run through pasture land for cows. It went from a nicely paved road, to a rough paved road, to an unpaved road as we travelled 7 miles or so. The search for burrows did not produce much. There were peregrine falcons and American kestrels here, and tons of spent shotgun shells plus orange debris from skeet shooting all over. At the end of our trek down Meiss, quite a ways down the unpaved section, we did find a small stream. Along the bank and near the road the stream had apparently cut away the soil and made a nice wall. The wall had several large holes or burrows. A triangular hole near the top of the wall had an animal inside. “Hooray,” I was thinking, “it must be a burrowing owl!” I changed my settings for shooting inside a hole and used manual focus. Then I borrowed Suellen’s binoculars after she announced that it was not an owl at all. It was a huge rabbit.
You never know what Mother Nature has in store.
Bob Perry
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