On a beautiful January 19th day, 42 birders walked around Dos Picos County Park and then traveled on to a blustery Rangeland Road and found a total of 53 species. 

Here is the list: 

Canada Goose
Mallard
Northern Shoveler
Ring-necked Duck
American Wigeon
Ruddy Duck
Bufflehead
Black-Crowned Night Heron
Turkey Vulture
Osprey (successfully catching a fish!)
Red-shouldered Hawk
Red-Tailed Hawk
Ferruginous Hawk
Bald Eagle
American Kestrel
Merlin
Peregrine Falcon
Sora
American Coot
Mourning Dove
Anna’s Hummingbird
Acorn Woodpecker
Nuttall’s Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Black Phoebe
Say’s Phoebe
Cassin’s Kingbird
California Scrub Jay
American Crow
Oak Titmouse
Bushtit
White-breasted Nuthatch
Bewick’s Wren
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Western Bluebird
Mountain Bluebird
Hermit Thrush
California Thrasher
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
American Pipit
Cedar Waxwing
Yellow-rumped Warbler
California Towhee
Song Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Western Meadowlark
Red-winged Blackbird
Brewer’s Blackbird
Great-tailed Grackle
Western Meadowlark
House Finch

Hal Benham

From Doug Walkley:

Hal Benham led a large group on a very productive outing to Los Picos and the Rangeland today. Although the picture below looks a little gruesome, it does point out the dependency that species have. Below is what remains of the head of a ground squirrel. You can see on front incisor and two rows of molars and bicuspids.

The interesting part about this is that it was being fed upon by a pair of ferruginous hawks, one red-tailed hawk and three ravens. As you can imagine they had their pecking order and the ferruginous hawks were ruling the roost.

This little bit of nature was observed at the end of the day as we drove to lunch in Ramona. After parking past the scene of the crime, I crawled under the barbwire fence to see what was so interesting to all these birds. The ferruginous wanted to hold his ground but the squeak of the fence sent him flying off with some of his prey in his talons.