Egrets, Black Phoebes, Swallows

Today my sis and I took another drive, to the Eel River Delta area not far south of my hometown. The habitat in this area is mostly drained pastures, but also includes fresh and saltwater marsh, tidal mudflats, and a maze of sloughs, levees, dunes and sandy beaches...

Starting at a boat dock on Humboldt Bay, I was able to get a shot of this great egret before it spied me and took to the air...

The same goes for this great blue heron...

A good time to throw in my beach wildflower shots...above is the yellow sand verbena...

Above, dune buckwheat...

Above and below are ice plant flowers...

Ok, back to the cow pastures...above is a sparrow (Savannah?), possibly fledgling...

A black phoebe...

American goldfinch of course...we saw several around old barns...

Gotta love this juvie's markings...birdie pimples?! The cliff swallow's parent was nearby...

He/she looked pretty frazzled, I think it was wet from the nearby soggy pasture...

Some type of sandpiper, very small, in the same swampy pasture...

Barn swallows were everywhere too...

Some roosting on the side of an old barn...

Another black phoebe, on the dried up algae-covered mud along a channel...

Back to the S Humboldt Bay area, this great egret kept strolling along the muddy shore while I followed on the opposite side taking photos, none of which came out real clear...and here I had an egret that actually didn't fly away. Look closely you can see the long strands hanging off the tip of the tail feathers...breeding plumage.

This concludes my birding/sight seeing around N Calif. Tomorrow I begin the long 3-day trek back to S Dakota and the serious summer weather that snuck in after I left...