Hello! I have had a very action-packed couple of days. I went birding on Saturday morning and saw something that I have never seen before: a great blue heron swallowing a baby muskrat WHOLE. It is probably one of the craziest things I have ever seen while birdwatching. It took the heron a few tries to get the muskrat down, but after soaking it in the pond water, the muskrat eventually slid right down the heron’s long neck. What a sight! Great blue herons usually eat small fish, reptiles, and amphibians, but they will eat practically anything that they can get between their mandibles. The rest of the outing was pretty uneventful and rainy, so overall, not a very birdy day, but a great memory.
I also spent most of Sunday and Monday in Los Angeles looking at colleges. I didn’t have much time to bird because we had a tight schedule, but I did end up seeing three life birds, an Anna’s hummingbird, a California towhee, and my 600th bird (that is logged on eBird, at least), an acorn woodpecker. Hopefully, I can return to California on a more birding-oriented trip.
See you soon!
-Thomas
