The first bird I photographed on this trip was a male House sparrow.  We stayed in Yreka, CA, our first night and I observed sparrows flying to these relatively low trees.  I would have been shooting into the setting sun, but I realized that the next morning, if the sparrows were still flying to the same location, they would be illuminated by the morning sun.  I rose early and obtained several good photos of the sparrows.

Our next find was not a bird.  We stopped at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge and saw more wildlife than we had seen on our previous two or three trips.  The refuge has a long driving route through it but strangely enough, for the national refuges we have visited, they prohibit you leaving your vehicle except at two places on the refuge.  That rule didn’t stop me from obtaining some nice photos of two different jackrabbits, both of which were very accommodating regarding photography from our vehicle.

And to go with the jackrabbits, we encountered a coyote making its rounds in the refuge.

We stayed in a wonderfully interesting house (designed and built by an architect) in, or just outside of, Inverness.  We hadn’t been there long before we discovered that a Pacific Slope flycatcher had a nest on top of a light just outside the door to our large patio.  This bird, and its mate, became the focus of my photography for the several days we stayed at the house.  I took many, many photos of the birds.  We were hoping that the eggs might hatch while we were there and were somewhat disappointed when they didn’t.  But here are a few of my early photos of the bird… and I won’t promise that there won’t be more in a future post!

I’ve published two posts at the same time, so be sure and read about my Bird of the Month in the post below!