About the Tahoe Big Year Project

The “Big Year” is a bird photography project that takes place over the course of 2018.  After attending a seminar at REI on birding in the Lake Tahoe area, I joined the birding activity that is being coordinated by the Tahoe Institute for Natural Science (TINS).  This is sort of a contest to see which birder can observe the most unique species of birds during the course of one year.  Of course, photographing the bird sighting is not strictly required by TINS, but for me to document what I’ve seen, as well as enhance my bird identification and wildlife photography skills – I consider a photograph a strict requirement. So every bird I claim to have seen (and have logged on the TINS site) will have an associated photograph on my website.  Please note that this means not all the photos may be of the quality I’d enter in a camera club competition or that I’d offer for commercial sale.

If you are interested in learning more about the Big Year project being run by TINS, please refer to the Tahoe Big Year website.

Click on any blog entry below to get the detail of that day’s field trip and what birds I saw.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Cove East / South Lake Tahoe, December 2018)

NOTE: For miscellaneous sightings of birds I’ve observed that don’t merit a full blog page, refer to the Miscellaneous TBY Page.

Glenshire Pond

Glenshire Pond

Today I had it in my head to check out Glenshire Pond, which is a little ways east of Truckee.  On the way (via the Mt Rose Highway) I stopped at the Incline Village Green to see if anything unusual was happening there.  I did see the usual suspects, including...

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Cove East & Fallen Leaf Lake

Cove East & Fallen Leaf Lake

Today I returned to Cove East in South Lake Tahoe, specifically to try and see more shorebirds.  Dropping my friend off at the Reno airport for an early flight made it easy to get there early, and it was fairly empty when I arrived at Cove East just after 7 am.  I did...

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Cove East – South Tahoe

Cove East – South Tahoe

Today Don and I drove to South Lake Tahoe to meet up with the TINS birding group at Cove East, where the Upper Truckee River flows in to Lake Tahoe.  (The start of the walk is just across from the boat marina.) There were about 15 birders on the trip, but in spite of...

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Angora Burn Area

Angora Burn Area

Today I drove over to South Lake Tahoe to revisit the Angora Burn Area.  I arrived about 8:30 am and meandered up the trail.  It was a beautiful cool morning, in the 60's when I started out.  I saw several Chickadees, Chipping Sparrows, and a Brown Creeper in the pine...

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Lily Lake

Lily Lake

Today I met up with my brother Chris (aka Doaf) in South Lake Tahoe, and we drove up to Lily Lake, just south of Fallen Leaf Lake; the one-lane road to get there was a little hairy, as there were many summer vacationers out and about.  Since Doaf had recently hiked in...

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Prosser Reservoir

Prosser Reservoir

Today Don and I drove to Prosser Creek Reservoir, arriving around 8 am.  First we checked out the Prosser Creek outflow area at the east end of Prosser Reservoir, where we had visited a couple weeks back.  We parked at the other side of the creek, hoping again to see...

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