#224. Mountain Bluebird
Besides Prairie Falcon (which I ended up not seeing on this trip), Mountain Bluebird was the other species I was really hoping to see in the Cuyama Valley. It’s hard to find them anywhere else in the county, but small numbers of them winter there. Paul Lehman’s essential book Birds of Santa Barbara County says they have “mostly departed by mid-March”, but a user in eBird had reported a number of them on Wasioja Road a few days before, so I was hopeful.
I pulled onto the road in mid-morning, found a spot with bluebirds and started checking them out, but they were all Westerns. Nothing wrong with that, though; I’ll watch Western Bluebirds any chance I get. So I watched them, and the Horned Larks that were around (they were everywhere), and a few early migrant swallows that were swooping overhead, when I heard a bluebird calling from a nearby fence post, and there it was: my fifth and final county year bird of the day: Mountain Bluebird.
After working so hard to try to turn the Western Bluebirds into one it was exciting to see a bird with all the distinguishing features: pale blue and gray without a hint of red, narrower beak, and an overall longer, thinner profile with longer tail and wings.
Such a stylish bird.
Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/172238244771.
