Goody Woodies

Perhaps it is because it was a Saturday - and a gorgeous day at that - that our birding trip to the Irvine Regional Park wasn't that productive. The park, although harboring a pond and lots of trees, was actually a family park, complete with mini train rides and horses for rent. And families came in droves that morning. Ergo, more non-birding people, less birds.

This was also our first time to bird this place. There was no trail map available so we just sort of wandered aimlessly guessing where we could find the birds that were reported seen here. Like the Lewis Woodpecker and the Sapsuckers. Even after several hours of meandering, we still dipped on those.

On the plus side, we had good looks at the "woodies" - Acorn Woodpecker,

Nuttall's Woodpecker

and the very colorful Wood Ducks.

The Belted Kingfisher, a species that has eluded our various attempts at photographing it, continued to torment us by perching at distances that even a spotting scope would be quite inutile.

My wife's endeavours to capture the Double-crested Cormorants in flight were all in vain. It was almost noon, temperatures were uncharacteriscally high at this time of year, and we had just hiked for some distance. That is the reason, I explained to her that she did not have the steadiness in her hands to do BIF (birds in flight) shots.
11:30 and it was time to go. We drove off as the sounds of the toot-tooting of the tiny train and the clip-clopping of the horses' hooves faded in the distance.