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The Daily Bucket. Truckee River walk, Reno, NV. Nature in the city. Mystery bird. [1]

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Date: 2022-07-27

iNaturalist suggested "Black-billed Magpie". Nuh uh, I don't think. Size slightly smaller than Brewer's Blackbird. I do not know this i.d. Oh, wait. Read below.

Tuesday, July 26, 2022

I’ve checked images for juvenile/fledgling/female for Black-billed Magpie, Brewer’s Blackbird, Clark’s Nutcracker, and California Scrub Jay, and nothing I saw even came close with those.

Little help? Ah, never mind.

On second look, it may be just that. A fledgling Black-billed Magpie. If so, cool. That’ll be a “first” for me.

Baby Black-billed Magpie

(Not my photo)

Mine would obviously be a little older, and able to fly somewhat, I think. So yeah, I’m calling this a very young Black-billed Magpie.

Rear view.

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I had occasion to be in Reno once again, and had several hours free time until my appointment. I ride the Veterans van over there from here in Quincy, CA; the other riders had early appointments, mine wasn’t until 1:00 p.m. Since I knew this was going to be the case, I already had a plan to walk over to the Truckee River and along it. There’s a bicycle/walking path that goes for several miles. This pleasant side trip has been productive for me in the past, and back when I lived in Reno (2014-2017) I would bicycle along this path from time to time. I accessed the path at the bridge over the Truckee on Wells Avenue.

A bridge over an older bridge. The path is directly across the old roadway; note big white stripes.

Don’t let the gloom of under the bridge discourage you. It’s actually quite pleasant down here, and quite safe.

The Truckee River.

One can almost forget one is in the city.

My turnaround destination was Wingfield Park, about one mile upstream from the bridge. For orientation:

The Wells Avenue bridge is at far upper right. Orange line shows my route.

CLICK FOR FULL SIZE IMAGE.

That sets the stage for my nature walk. You are all no doubt desperately wondering if I actually got any photos of animals or birds, and are simply slavering to see. Well, yeah. Animals besides Ground Squirrels not so much, but there were a few birds. Couple of ‘em pretty nice.

Mallard drake in eclipse plumage. Dozens to hundreds of these all along the river. Or is this just a female? I’ve been checking images, and danged if it ain’t darn hard to tell the difference.

Well, we’ve all seen Mallards aplenty, so it’s small matter the sex of my particular bird this day. For me, it was just nice to be out along the river where it was relatively cool and pleasant. Here’s a couple of shots of what the walk looks like, city-fied:

One of the nicer man-made vantage points for looking along the river. This is public access space.

This is the new Virginia Street bridge, constructed in 2016. It may stand up better than its predecessors during high water. Speaking of which...

When I got to Wingfield Park, I spotted this sign. 1997 was a wet winter.

I made a couple of annotations to the flood photo in the sign. View is looking north.

CLICK FOR FULL SIZE IMAGE

I found this short (four minute) video on YouTube. Some very captivating images.

This point being my turnaround, I began moseying on back. I had plenty of time, so I did stop several times on the way back, walking down closer to the river, and just sitting still and enjoying being outdoors. Didn’t seem to be anything spectacular to photograph, anyway. Example:

Brewer’s Blackbird

Then I heard a hawk. Could I spot it? There it was, flying in. Oh, wow, to join a mate it looks like.

The bird on the left is the one that I spotted flying in. They’re perched on a big light pole/fixture.

Shooting against the sky can just produce a silhouette, no color or detail, but this time I set my exposure high. Resolution isn’t great, but I’ll take any hawk shot I can get that comes out even half-way decent. Red-tailed Hawk, I believe.

One bird I did have in mind, hoping to see because I’ve seen them along the Truckee River on previous occasions, was the Double-crested Cormorant. No luck there, but immediately after seeing the hawks I cast my gaze to the river once again, and was most pleasantly surprised by a Black-crowned Night Heron. I was able to get within about ten feet of the bird. It was perched right at the water’s edge on my side. These birds seem utterly unperturbed by human presence. Gotta love ‘em for that! Easy-peasy photography.

By this time it was going on 11:00 a.m., but that still left me with two hours to meander on back to the doctor’s office, so I decided to walk downstream to the next bridge and access back up to the surface streets. Sure was glad I did. I again left the path and went down the bank to get close to the river’s edge and into the cool of the shade trees. There was a big Canada Goose out on a rock in the middle of the river that I was watching. Then a bunch of Common Merganser came swimming upstream, diving out of sight, and resurfacing. I started snapping some frames, and sure got a surprise when I looked closely at one of them. I’ll sure put this down as a “keeper”.

Lookee there. One of ‘em came up with crayfish jambalaya.

CLICK FOR FULL SIZE IMAGE

The nice-nice sights for the day were not over yet. From the exact same spot as seeing the Mergansers, I gazed just ever so slightly upstream, and by golly:

THERE’S my Cormorant, hey hey!

Double-crested Cormorant

I’m confident in saying now that I got much more than just fine exercise this day. Ya never know what ya might see!

Now It's Your Turn.

What have you noted happening in your area or travels? As usual post your observations as well as their general location in the comments.

Thank you.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/27/2112798/-The-Daily-Bucket-Truckee-River-walk-Reno-NV-Nature-in-the-city-Mystery-bird

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