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The Daily Bucket. A nice spring morning walk. American Valley, Quincy, CA. [1]

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Date: 2025-04-10

The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns. We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below. Each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the phenological patterns that are quietly unwinding around us. To have the Daily Bucket in your Activity Stream, visit Backyard Science’s profile page and click on Follow.

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After getting home and reviewing my photos, I counted these eleven bird species in my take.

American Coot

Great Blue Heron

Tree Swallow

Savannah Sparrow

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Black-billed Magpie

American Robin

Sandhill Crane

Canada Goose

Cinnamon Teal

Red-winged Blackbird

I spotted these three additional species but I didn’t take any photos of them.

Song Sparrow

Steller's Jay

Mallard

Plus, I heard a Coyote off singing in the distance but never sighted it.

7:07 a.m. at the entrance to the Leonhardt Ranch Learning Landscape

Spring blossoms coming out on “wild” apple(?)

No dogs is a good rule because that way you don’t have to worry about dodging dog poop while you’re walking. Goose poop, well, that just goes with the territory. And thank goodness no bicycles are allowed either because I’m tellin’ ya that bicycle poop is just terrifying.

First bird sighting along the path out in a shallow water-filled depression. Cinnamon Teal. These birds have been hanging out here for at least a week now. That’s got to be a good thing.

Canada Goose and a Mallard hen

Looking back along the path the way I came; buildings of Quincy in the far background. Looking west.

More Canada Goose and one of three interpretive signs along the path. Signs were designed, created and placed by students from Quincy High School several years ago.

It’s hard from just this photo to experience the amount of water from this small tributary that is flowing into the main creek, Boyle Creek, that the walking path goes along. But it really is voluminous, and comes from just a seep across the way about three hundred yards, at the foot of the big hill behind the high school. American Valley is a very water-rich environment, being fed by one main creek, Spanish Creek, and five smaller creeks coming down from the mountains on the south side of the valley. And that’s just here on the west end of the valley. Over on the east side are Mill Creek and Greenhorn Creek.

Just past the spot above, over in the grasses, a solitary Sandhill Crane. I never get tired of seeing and photographing these marvelous, colorful, vocal, and serene large birds.

An American Robin basks in the first rays of the day, warming up and drying off any condensation on its feathers.

At a bend in the path an aerial congregation of Tree Swallows materializes. Just by the bench there’s a fence post with a nesting box mounted on it. I think this may be part of Tree Swallow mating behavior, or perhaps just competition for the nesting space. I am not certain. But there had to be at least a couple dozen birds altogether swarming this one spot.

Same image as title photo.

Enjoy a couple minutes of Tree Swallow video.

Continuing my trek I got another nice scenic view of the valley and the rapidly diminishing fog. Just around the willow tree patch at left of center is the end of the walking path where I have to turn around and retrace my steps to return home. But before I went another ten yards I spied one of my favorites of quarry, the perpetually camera-shy Black-billed Magpie.

Fortunately this one was endowed with an extra measure of equanimity so as to allow me time to mount my camera to my tripod (which I had earlier extended and was carrying, ready to deploy) and catch this brief sequence of flight.

At the end of the path and turnaround, this Ruby-crowned Kinglet was playing flitter-flutter through the branches of a willow, and in another direction up on a fence post at about one hundred yards distance I caught my first-of-season Savannah Sparrow.

You can just make out the yellow brow, characteristic for i.d. of Savannah Sparrow.

Enjoy this video of a Red-winged Blackbird which I took before heading back for home.

The joys of bird watching for the morning and seeing additional species was not over as I caught these two more on the way back.

American Coot

Great Blue Heron

Now it’s your turn. What’s been up in your world nature-wise? Please let us know in the comments and include your location and any photos or video you’d like to share. Thanks!

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