#60

The urge to start a new Bigby list got the better of me on Friday. Nothing audacious; I tallied my first ten or so species while lying half-asleep in bed, listening to birds through the open window. When I finally roused myself at the horrendously late hour of seven a.m., I quickly left and spent a few hours poking around the Villa Park Flood Control Basin on my mountain bike. It was for fun, more than anything else; the basin isn't too great for birding this time of year, so I wasn't terribly surprised to come up with only fifty-some species.

I spent the next couple days doing Christmas Bird Counts (Lake Elsinore on Saturday and Mile Square Park on Sunday), so nothing new for the Bigby list those days. Hopefully I'll get a post up about Mile Square sometime soon; as usual, I had fun and saw a few interesting birds (oh, and Irene's breakfast did not disappoint.) This afternoon I added Chipping Sparrow while out for my run in the neighborhood, and then this evening I stepped outside onto the driveway to add number sixty, a hooting Great Horned Owl.

As you've probably surmised by now, my Bigbying has been very low-key thus far. Sure... I could have a hundred and sixty species by now without too much effort, but what's the point? I'll get them eventually.