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We bailed out of our El Dorado County home to escape the heat and wildfire smoke while hoping to find cooler conditions with some summer creatures in the ByPass. Hooray! No smoke in the ByPass and air temps held steady at 88F for the duration. We drove the loop and its offshoots with zero other vehicles/birders present.

A few fields have been given a couple of inches of water now, and this has attracted shorebirds (mostly distant) egrets and a few great blue herons. Depending on backgrounds (gorgeous green rice fields, bright ponds, blue skies) we were able to capture some nice images. Remarkably abundant were the raptors: northern harriers, red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures. All of them were busy climbing thermals upward and drifting wherever the updrafts took them. A few made closer swoops for better portraits.

Dragonflies are still shamelessly flying around while fully coupled up. They were very abundant in rice fields and irrigation channels alike.

A lone double-crested cormorant was photographed atop a sort piling with open mouth for cooling and with lots of gular fluttering.

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