A Colorful Evening

It was a colorful evening tonight. The contrails were lit up like big magenta arrows all pointing toward Los Angeles. It was also an exciting birding day for Sonja, with four life species. This morning, when she dropped me off at work we spent a couple minutes strolling the trails looking for a Painted Redstart that has been seen displaying for the past three days. No luck on the redstart, but we did spot three life species for Sonja. They included a Bewick's Wren, several Lucy's Warblers, and a Common Black Hawk that we watched fly down to the stream bank to pounce on some unsuspecting invertebrate. That last one was a particularly cool sighting.

And this evening, just minutes before I snapped that picture of the sunset, Sonja saw her first ever Vermillion Flycatcher. I attempted to get a picture of it, but with the dim light, the distance to the bird (it was about 50 yards off), and the fact that I was taking it through binoculars, the results weren't as dramatic as I had hoped.

You can see the brilliant red on this beautiful bird even from this distance. Certainly, if there is any bird that doesn't need a close-up to demonstrate how striking its plumage is, it's this one. Even so, here's a photo of it a little closer so you can see what you're looking at.

We also got to watch a pocket gopher excavating its burrow with a mouth full of dirt.

I took a movie of this little guy, too, but it's even more boring than all the other movies I post on here. So I decided to spare you.