It’s BigYearFamily Week # 4 . On 1/21 and using a 2003 edition of Day Hikes Around Ventura County we were enroute to the Tar Creek Trail out of Fillmore. Looking forward to birding/slow hiking in the Sespe Condor Sanctuary we were dismayed to encounter a NO Entry posting about 5 miles for the supposed trailhead. Plan B became a late start on the Santa Paul Canyon trail which begins beside the campus of Saint Thomas Aquinas College between Santa Paula and Ojai. The only 2021 First Bird of the day turned out to be an American Robin, a beauty I have rarely recognized since moving to California but saw them all the time in our backyards in Ontario and Quebec. We enjoyed many tiny yellow throated birds in the trees. I don’t name them here because back at home later enjoying Dean’s “best” pics of the week pictures of 3 different little birds with yellow “somethings” appeared on the screen before me. Damned if I could name any of them despite having seen them many times before AND Dean naming them for me. A Common Yellowthroat? A Yellow-rumped Warbler? A Lesser Goldfinch? A Cassin’s Kingbird ? Maybe this will help??
Lynn
The Big Year 2021 
Haha! I feel you Mum. Today we were running and I said hello to a bird and Peter said “Who do we have here?” and I said, ‘I would have said yellow rumped warbler, but then when it flew it looked more like a lesser goldfinch’…sigh. We will keep at it eh?! – Blair
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