I love wetlands. Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area, 25 square miles of wetlands, is particularly beautiful at this time of year: water everywhere; sun low in the sky; subtle play of light on clouds and water.
For the record, the birds we saw on this trip:
Canada Goose
Gadwall
American Wigeon
Mallard
Cinnamon Teal
Northern Shoveler
Northern Pintail
Green-winged Teal
Bufflehead
Common Goldeneye
American White Pelican
American Bittern
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Black-crowned Night Heron
White-tailed Kite
Northern Harrier
Red-shouldered Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Pacific Golden-Plover*
Killdeer
Black-necked Stilt
Long-billed Curlew
Least Sandpiper
Wilson’s Snipe
Ring-billed Gull
Mourning Dove
White-throated Swift
Downy Woodpecker
Black Phoebe
American Crow
Common Raven
Marsh Wren
American Pipit
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Song Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Red-winged Blackbird
Western Meadowlark
Brewer’s Blackbird
Common Grackle
——
43 species
* My field notes remark on the very distinct buffy supercilium, primaries extending about the same distance as the tail feathers, and the golden or buffy wash on the feathers (definitely a warmer color than a Bleck-bellied Plover). I did not get a good look at the bill, because I was looking at the bird against a background of mud that was similar in color to the bill. A reliable report had two Pacific Golden-Plovers at Yolo Bypass on Tuesday.
One bird we did not put on the list, but may have seen, was Eurasian Wigeon. They have been reported by reliable observers at about the same place we thought we might have seen them, but we did not get a positive identification.