2013-08-09 Agua Dulce Again | shadeTreeImaging

Western Wood-Pewee at Agua Dulce Creek, near the Sunrise Highway, South Of Julian, California. San Diego, California.

Agua Dulce Creek is a popular birding destination for the local San Diego birding community. On my way to visit this place I stopped first at the town center of Mount Laguna and met a Northern Flicker.

Repeat visits to many locations is a good strategy for discovering new actors, new scripts and scores on a familiar stage. Some players raise families and stay, some raise families and leave, some players stop for a visit then move north to raise families, some visit after the’ve raised families in the north. One aspect of birding I enjoy is experiencing these cycles and seeing the changes through the seasons. We might not have ‘seasons’ in Southern California, like many other parts of the country, where trees change color and shed their leaves. We don’t see snow for months at a time, but we can watch birds as they come and go, and we can enjoy new families being raised.

The birds I met on this expedition were Northern Flicker, Nuttall’s Woodpecker, Allen’s Hummingbird, Western Bluebird, Acorn Woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker, Pygmy Nuthatch, Western Wood-Pewee.