Mike in the Wild

There is no better inspiration for a blog post than a first-time encounter with a new bird.  And it's especially true when the sighting and photographs help me dig deeper into the fascinating field of ornithology. I recently made a trip to the Simi Valley area of Southern California and managed to pick up where I left off on a birding trip to the same location last year.  On that trip, I observed that some common birds in California were closely related to some common birds in Arizona, but that the geographically separated birds were in fact unique species within their respective families.  As a result,  Arizona has  Woodhouse's  scrub-jays,  canyon  towhees and  juniper  titmice, while California has  California  scrub-jays,  California  towhees and  oak  titmice, living on opposite ends of a vast landscape of deserts and mountains. On my first birding trip to the West Coast, I mostly ignored the quails...