A couple weeks ago I had an opportunity to do some birding in San Diego. I got some nice shots of some of the shorebirds I saw, as well as the ubiquitous Brown Pelicans (I've posted links to them below. But there was one bird I was unsure of. I only saw it for a few seconds, just long enough to snap off one underexposed photo. I just assumed at the time that it was another California Towhee, until I got home and did a little digital manipulation and thought, wow, that bird is nothing like a towhee!

Right now I'm leaning toward calling it a Wrentit (which would be a lifer for me), but I can't verify it since we haven't unpacked our bird guides yet from our recent move. What do you all think?

Mystery Bird (Wrentit???):





Other San Diego birds:
Ruddy Turnstone with a harbor seal



Marbled Godwit



Brown Pelican and Heerman's Gull



Whimbrel





Willet




(Oh, and I haven't changed my siggie yet, but I'm no longer in Arizona. We are now proud residents of West Glacier, Montana!)


Paul
Rimrock, AZ
The Wandering Tattler

Huh...I just tried clicking on the thumbnails to make sure they worked and I keep getting Photobucket errors. Are others getting the same thing? I'm wondering if I put in the code wrong...although I copied it directly from photobucket. Weird.

Anyway, I'm attaching the mystery bird/wrentit picture in its full size so you can see it better, just in case those links don't work:



Paul
Rimrock, AZ
The Wandering Tattler

Here's my favorite photo from my trip, too. I was amazed that this little guy kept creeping towards me once I laid down in its path. Didn't veer off until it was within eight feet of me...I had to switch my lens to the macro setting to get it to focus on the thing!



Paul
Rimrock, AZ
The Wandering Tattler

Looks like a Wrentit to me, but I only have my guide to go on, never having been fortunate enough to see one!

Jill

Benton, ME
Canon Digital Rebel XT
Canon EF70-300 F4-5.6 IS USM

Great photos! I've never seen a wrentit before so I don't know.

sarah merion station, Pennsylvania zone 6B

Paul It's a Wrentit.Congratulations, and great pictures.

Alan~S Cal

That's a Wrentit alright Paul,I would like very much to have him on my life list, nice shots!(I took a peek at your Photobucket album, hope you don't mind ) ...So I see you are also experiencing Photobucket problems?? This came up on Brian's post on the Hummingbird Forum some time ago... it looks like the overall format has changed and it just isn't possible to post thumbnails any longer. I wasn't able to use the auto copy feature for the HTML code either...

Ruth
Everett, WA
Zone 8

Yay! I'm glad it was what I thought it was. I'm rather impressed that I was able to ID it correctly without the benefit of having my field guide handy.

Yeah, I'm not sure what's going on with photobucket, either. I'm considering switching all of my photos over to flickr anyway. They seem to look better over there for some reason. Does anyone know if flickr has a thumbnail feature for message boards? I know they've got that photostream thing, and I think you can post a "poster" of your pics, but I really liked photobuckets prewritten html codes. It was convenient.

sigh

Oh well...

Paul
Rimrock, AZ
The Wandering Tattler

That's quite a change in climate-from Rimrock to West Glacier! I love that part of Montana,but if I think I live in a cold area,I'm sure West Glacier beats it.

Great pictures! I saw my first willet last May in North Carolina and was delighted.

Nancy
Chazy,NY zone 4

Great shots! That seal looks a bit smug LOL

DuckWatcher
No California -- Zone 9b
Olympus SP-560 UZ