Snow geese!

The oasis got a flyover of [41] Snow Geese, which happened unexpectedly and quickly. Had me scrambling to document. It counts as a new oasis species, even though they only flew over.

I heard one of them call and looked up to see them. Had my camera on me, but couldn't get it to focus. It never focuses on dots in the sky.  Finally, after they were way far away one of my blind shots captured the above heavily-cropped photo. Better than nothing. I've learned that not zooming the camera in situations like that is better. That's probably what I did to end up with this one.

Other than that, birding has been rather boring, both in town, and at the oasis. The day I saw the geese (Nov 7), I also saw my last Lucifer of the year, I presume. It was a juvenile male that I hadn't seen before, so I think it was just migrating through. My breeding Lucifers have all gone.

I'm told that Monarchs migrated way farther east of here this year, so maybe we won't get any exciting winter birds this year. Perhaps they only winter here if they're desperate, and with lots of rain everywhere, there are better places to go. Don't know.

In town I got a couple of unusual butterfly species. Besides the Long-tailed Skipper that I saw on Oct 27 at the Plumbago (see previous post), I had a Dorantes Longtail also on the Plumbago (and Turk's Caps) on Nov 6.

I have lots of Turk's Cap, but only one Plumbago, so, naturally, that has inspired me to protect the Plumbago from a possible freeze tonight. Also going to plant a bunch more of it in the spring. Can't ever get too much of a good thing!