Today Don and I drove to the Martis Creek recreation area which is near Truckee in north Tahoe, just south of the Martis Creek Dam. We joined the Tahoe Institute of Natural Science (TINS) led bird walk, which was led by naturalist Will Richardson. It was a group of about 20 folks which seemed large for birding, and a cloudy cold day, but we did see a few interesting species. A fairly rare species identified by the naturalist was the vesper sparrow. This bird was singing exuberantly, but was observed at quite some distance, so I apologize for the poor quality photo (taken with 300mm lens but no tripod). We saw a number of Audubon warblers (which I’ve learned is the western version of the yellow-rumped warbler which I’ve already observed for TBY.) We also saw a number of song sparrows and several ducks. A good find was the double-crested cormorant. Apparently this is a fairly unusual sighting for Nevada (though I’ve seen them commonly in the SF bay area). We also saw two types of swallows: the tree swallow which is blue-gray on top but white on the bottom, and the cliff swallows which have orange on the tails and head. These swallows dart around so quickly, it was a challenge to get clear shots of them. While looking for killdeers (which are common and were observed by other birders on this field trip) we saw a spotted bird that acted like a killdeer, but didn’t have the correct coloration. The naturalist confirmed this to be a spotted sandpiper in its breeding plumage. Cool! Afterwards, we had lunch in a café in Truckee, which is where I took the shot of the house sparrow for the TBY list.
Today I added 6 species to my Tahoe Big Year list.
We saw this lone coyote roaming near the Martis Creek Dam, just as we pulled up to park the car.
Bird Observations at Martis Creek
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