California Birds

An Albatross at the farthest point of our pelagic trip from Half Moon Bay.

On our trip last week, Len took photos of as many interesting birds as he could, and he's posting them on his Flickr page now. Here are a few of my favorites. You can click on them to get to his Flickr page.

Common Murre.

Golden Eagle.

White Pelicans.

Hermit Warbler.

goodbye california

UPDATE at 9 PM EST: our plane departed & arrived on time, and we are now at home!

Beautiful California

Today at dawn: the headland just north of Half Moon Bay Harbor.

On the path by the water we saw this snail crossing the sand.

The kelp from an earlier high tide was draped on the rocks.

Later, we drove the coast road to Santa Cruz because a rare bird
was on the pier. It's been some time since we drove this way, and
I love every bit of the scenery.

Here's the bird that has strayed here from very far south:
a red-footed booby.

We also stopped to look for birds among the redwoods.

Our last birding: looking at a snowy plover and his friend.

Our birdwatching tour ends with a group dinner tonight. We have been surprised and delighted every day with the highly varied bird and animal life, the wide range of scenery and habitats, and the skill and thoughtfulness of our guides. Here's a link to the organizing company if you want to travel with this very well organized and skillful group: https://fieldguides.com/

Text and photos copyright © 2019 by Mae & Len Sander for Mae's blog, 
maefood dot blogspot.com. 
If you find this post elsewhere, you are on a pirate website!

A day on the ocean

As the sun was rising, we started our day at the harbor at Half-Moon Bay, ready for a day at sea.

The harbor authorities were raising the flag.

We were booked on a small boat to go out into the Pacific just beyond the
beginning of the continental shelf 30 miles offshore.

On the rock walls defining the harbor we saw huge numbers of birds,
especially pelicans.

Flocks of thousands of shearwaters were feeding, and sometimes flying up out of the water with their eccentric wing beats.
It's impossible to capture the incredible experience of being surrounded by such huge numbers of sea birds1

Some sea lions were sitting on a buoy.

Huge rafts of sea birds and sea mammals were feeding on schools of anchovies. Whales were coming up for air, seals and
sea lions were breaching, and birds were flying in a chaotic and spectacular displan.

Crossing California

Sunup: we were looking for birds on a small road uphill from Mono Lake.

Our first bird was a sooty grouse -- a shy bird that's usually hard to see.

As we were starting our drive over the Sierras into the Central Valley,
we were delighted to see a prairie falcon on a utility pole.

After seeing the falcon, we all piled into the big van once more and our intrepid tour leader drove for six or seven hours
to get to Half Moon Bay on the coast side of the San Francisco Bay where we'll spend the next 3 days.

All photos & text ©2019 by Mae & Len Sander for Mae's Food Blog.

If you are reading this elsewhere it's been stolen.

Bodie, a Ghost Town

The gold and silver mining town of Bodie near Lee Vining, California, had a population of 8,000 to 10,000 in its glory days in the 1880. Something like 90% of the inhabitants were men, who lived in boarding houses and patronized the 200 restaurants, numerous saloons and brothels, and two (only two) churches. Mining stocks were hit hard by the depression of 1892-1893. However, Bodie held on,

Two fires burned much of the town in the 1880s and then in 1932, leaving only a fraction of the buildings still standing.  One mining company kept going by making technological improvements -- a hydroelectric project sited in the nearby mountains made its operations far more economical than the previous way of burning wood for power, and they introduced a cyanide process for extraction of much more gold and silver from tailings left by previous inefficient methods.

Brodie became a ghost town after 1942 when gold mining was banned to ensure that all America's industrial effort went into working to support World War II. The site became a California State Historical Park in 1962, preserved, but not restored. We enjoyed a guided walk around the town with our birdwatching group today, with an excellent guide who told us all these things.

The one remaining mining complex. The shafts are on the hillside, and the processing plant is lower down the hill.

The miners' union flag in the small museum. 

In the museum: a hat with egret plumes, reminding birders like us of
what started conservation efforts to save the egrets over 100 years ago.

©2019 Mae Sander for maefood dot blogspot dot com

What to eat while on a birding tour

Driving out of the San Francisco Bay area, we birded along back roads. In particular on Mining Road, where we
ate at the Junction Café. Many motorcycles had been zooming past us -- and here they were!

Between our stops at parks with birds, creeks with birds, roadside birds, and high mountain passes with birds, we've been eating some interesting meals. Some were even pretty tasty. Here are a whole lot of photos of the most interesting and unusual features of diners, cafés, and restaurants where we've stopped.

The Junction Cafe is special. Several of our group had the Mexican food there,
which they liked. I wasn't so lucky: my sandwich wasn't at all good. 

The decor is interesting.

At Emberz bar and restaurant in Sonora, where we spent the third and fourth nights of our trip, the most interesting thing
was the self-serve wine machine. A number of bottles are hooked up with flexible tubing and pumps attached to
a credit card machine. You put your glass under the spigot and press some buttons... 

Another view of the automatic wine dispenser. The food was pretty good.
I had chicken marsala, which I liked. Unfortunately on the second night
of our stay, we ate there and the service was horrible. 

Breakfast at the lovely Perko's diner in Sonora. Here's the group. Among the things we ordered: chicken-friend steak with
white gravy and hash browns, fruit plate, pancakes with fruit compote, sausages, eggs cooked in lots of ways, French Toast,
and every other thing a diner could possibly offer! 

Perko's decor. 

Perko's kitchen and our waitress who remembered everyone's preferences
for coffee etc. on the second day when we came back.

My favorite: a Mexican café in Arnold, CA near the Calaveras Big Trees State Park.  

The kitchen of the Mexican Diner.

Lunch today at the Hippo Bar just over the Sonora Pass across the Sierras.

Another view of the Hippo bar.

Finally: dinner tonight near Mono Lake:

Everything was made in-house, including these really tempting cakes and pies. I had blueberry pie.