This summer has been a good one for butterflies, flowers, and birds. Possibly because there were significant winter storms and now everything has responded.
The Crosby Lakes
The Crosby is a golf community in Rancho Santa Fe, California. We bought a home here in 2006, but were golf members long before there was a housing community. About two blocks from our house is a series of four lakes that have a trail around them. They don’t get much pedestrian traffic so it’s a good place to view wildlife in a housing community.
Great Blue Herons are frequent visitors to the lakes — patient hunters that will stand motionless for long stretches before striking. Sandy has photographed them here more times than she can count, and they still manage to surprise her with a good shot.
Belted kingfishers work the lake edges regularly, diving from low perches or hovering briefly before dropping into the water. They’re fast and skittish — getting a good shot requires some patience.
Mourning dove.
Mallard ducks are common at the lakes year-round.
Snowy egret — smaller and more active than the herons, darting after fish in the shallows.
Green heron — a compact, stocky bird that’s easy to overlook until you know what you’re looking for.
Glossy ibis — not a common sighting here, which made this one worth stopping for.
When the weather warms up American bullfrogs can be heard and seen around the lakes. Turtles are common as well.
Dragonflies are always present along the lake edges in summer.
The neighborhood has been blooming all season — yellow iris, pride of madeira, poppies, sunflowers, roses, day lilies, and magnolias all within walking distance of the lakes.
Around the House
Sandy has set up the yard to attract birds — a few conventional seed feeders, a couple of suet feeders, a peanut feeder, a thistle feeder, a large fountain, and a birdbath, plus the trees and bushes that provide shelter. The variety is good: the regulars like finches, sparrows, and mourning doves, plus spotted munia, red-winged blackbirds, quail, scrub jays, goldfinches, and grosbeaks. Red-shouldered hawks hunt the mice, rats, and ground squirrels that are attracted to the spilled seed.
Sharp-shinned hawks are the feeders’ other regular visitors — though not for the seed. They’re agile fliers that speed through the trees to surprise songbirds, and they swing through once or twice a day. Maybe 25% of the time a dove will fly into a window making it easier for the hawk to catch one. Sadly, it will then pluck the feathers and eat the dove right at the feeders — a reminder that this is still a wild food chain regardless of how much we’ve set up for the birds. If anything’s left over, one of the crows takes it.
Sandy’s three hummingbird feeders stay busy year-round — summers because of the offspring, winters because of the migrants passing through. By mid-summer the birds start relying less on the feeders because there’s so much in bloom around the yard.
By mid-summer the hummingbirds are working the salvia in the yard as much as the feeders. Sandy planted it specifically for them, and it delivers.
Every spring a few breeding pairs of hooded orioles arrive and set up near the yard. One of Sandy’s hummingbird feeders doubles as an oriole feeder, and she puts out jelly feeders as well. During peak feeding months she’s replacing the jelly 4–5 times a day. By mid-August the orioles have headed back south to winter in Mexico, only to return again in spring.
Male black-headed grosbeak — one of the more striking birds to show up at the feeders.
California quail waiting on a rock for Sandy to finish putting out the cracked corn.
Swallowtail butterflies have been especially abundant this season. They favor the society garlic we planted, but they’ll also work the butterfly bush, salvia, and birds of paradise around the yard. Between the butterflies, the birds, and the blooms, this has been a good summer to stay close to home.
