liamhuber's Favorites

In August, 1985, I was on a birding trip in California in an effort to see California Condor among other species. We knew that researchers were in the process of trapping all the wild birds to start a captive breeding program. We spent a day with researchers near Mt. Pinos and saw seven different condors. Four of them were wing tagged indicating they had already been captured at least once by researchers. Three of the birds we saw were not tagged, indicating they were wild and had never been caught. This is a shot (35 mm color slide) of one of the wild birds. It was no more than a few months after this date that all California Condors were in captivity and it would be years before they were released into the wild again. All California Condors at present stem from the captive program in one way or another. This is a shot of one of the last truly wild birds. The birds were very high and this image is cropped significantly to show the bird. I have only 6 slides of these birds from that 1985 trip.

Coso Junction Rest Area, Inyo County, California
27 October 2015

ebird checklist: ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S25570106

Southern lapwing 2nd record in North America, 1st record in Texas. Seen in the late evening resting on grass in golf course, then feeding, preening & stretching. It was attacked by a Scissor-tailed flycatcher and Northern mockingbird before flying off to a pond.

maybe hybrid? Head seemed more green and sides more white as in Greater Scaup, Bill seems to favor Lesser Scaup or Ring-necked. Missing spur on shoulder that seems to always be present in ring-necked ducks.

Rare bird for the central valley of California. Seen along with a Yellow-billed Magpie, and a European Starling. This remains one of my most glorious sightings nearly two years later! Such a good bird!

https://youtu.be/4SKnDW0t47E
Video of 2 loons. One held it's head up (I thought it was a cormorant at first because of the head tilt). The 2nd loon had a lot of white and smaller bill. Sorry for blurry long distance video, 55 seconds long

Terek Sandpiper
Carmel River mouth
Monterey Co., California
2 Sep 1988

This was the first (and remains the only) California record of this old world species. It was seen by hundreds of people at the time and was very well publicized. I bet virtually every birdwatcher in California in 1988 saw this bird. The main photo shows it in some beach debris, while the 2nd photo shows the bird on the beach with a Willet in the background. The Terek is about the size of a Solitary Sandpiper.

There are occasional records of this species in Alaska, and on the Aleutians it is probably annual, but mainland U.S. records are very rare.