Today's walk report: Strictly for the Birds

 The walk was short and pleasant, only about 1.34 miles but it was kind of hard to measure since I did several laps in the garden and zig-zagged around a bit. I was joined by Docken on the phone. Thank you, Docky. 

This is the same male Calypte anna hummingbird I was questioning being our friend Dusty yesterday. It is indeed Dusty. I was able to zoom in and crank up the tonal values well enough to see his little head and also the white dot under his right eye. This too is one of his typical hangs, atop the dead California Bay tree. I'm kind of surprised it hasn't been cut down yet. Nevertheless, Dusty enjoys perching on it.

When I started taking pictures it was only 55º and that seemed to be cold enough to limit both hummingbird and butterfly activity. Plus, flowers are getting rather scarce. I finally gave up on the garden and did a short loop around the lower campus.

Both European starlings and Brewer's blackbirds were abundant in one location. Actually, a little too abundant. On a few occasions they got a little excited, perhaps by my approach and would take off in flocks, flying low and circling over my head. The two species seem mostly comfortable in traveling together.

 Brewer's Blackbird (Euphagus cyanocephalus).

Female Brewer's Blackbirds.

 European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris).

I was able to drive onto the campus today and decided to take the car up the hill. Lo and behold, I'm pretty sure this is the same red-tailed hawk that I took pictures of on the 19th. It's the same spot on the same lamppost. The big difference is on the 19th it was looking at me with its back to me and today it was facing me. There's enough going on with markings on its head to give me relative confidence it's the same bird. Plus I checked some other pictures from the 19th when it was in a pine tree where I could see at least some breast feathers.

I think it was wondering about the fuzzy seed flying overhead.

Looks like a flying saucer or some sort of stealth aircraft disguised as a hawk.

Here's a side by side mock-up of a shot from today on the left and a shot from the 19th on the right. There's about a two hour difference in sun placement, I was not in exactly the same spot nor did I have the camera at the same focal length. This is as accurate as I cared to fuss with. I find stuff like this easy-peasy in Photoshop. Using Affinity Photo it was a bit challenging. The two images do not have the bird properly scaled.

And that was it. I had a couple of errands to run so I made a U-turn and headed out. Thanks again to Docken for also joining me on the errands.