Sheridan and I made a quick three-day trip to Los Angeles Oct
14 -16 2004; my first birding trip to the Golden State:
This page is devoted to the montane birds; CLICK
HERE to see some of the lowland stuff.
We had great luck with the toughies, including eye-level, close
looks at Lawrence's Goldfinches, and a large covey of Mountain Quail:
This young Band-tailed Pigeon
is not exactly a gaudy bird, but this species rarely presents
itself for good photos:
My Bird of the Trip: the gorgeous White-headed
Woodpecker:
- here being "nudged" by an Acorn
Woodpecker:
We saw a couple of typical Red-naped Sapsuckers, but this
one looked suspiciously like Yellow-bellied to me - the
throat was all-red, and did not seem to bleed into the black edge...:
The ubiquitous bird of the San Gabriel Mountains was Western Bluebird:
- in one large drinking group there was an imm./female type that
was much paler blue that all the others (rightmost bird in next
two photos):
- here's a close-up; I don't think this is a Mountain Bluebird,
but I was surprised at how pale this individual was:
here's a normal female-type (top-left) for comparison:
The drip at Chilao Visitor Center, Angeles National Forest was
fabulous for photography; note the rightmost Western Bluebird
has a quite whitish throat:
most Mountain Chickadees looked
like the one above, but the one below has an abbreviated white
supercilium: Oak Titmouse:
both Stellar's (above) and
Western Scrub Jays were fairly
common:
The Pacific western form of White-breasted
Nuthatch is quite dark on the upperparts: Pygmy Nuthatch:
We saw three kinds of Fox Sparrow:
this Sooty up high in the forests; a Slate-colored
in the semi-wooded foothills, and a Large-billed in the
Sepulveda Basin lowlands: Oregon Junco: Junco ssp.: this is a juvenile
Junco molting into first-basic - might it be a Pink-sided?:
