ML131788751
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Observation details
First detected at (37.1712436, -122.2847042) off Chalk Mountain Fire Rd, Santa Cruz County. Bird first seen in flight relatively far down a drainage. Tail pattern noted in flight. When it landed it was obviously a large upright thrush. At that distance and lighting it did not appear to be a robin, varied thrush, or hermit thrush based on lack of obvious plumage marking, and slender, upright stature. I lost track of it. I tried playing the TOSO call note from my phone and heard it respond twice, but then not again. About 15 minutes later I was a hundred yards or so inland on the fireroad when five WEBL and the TOSO flew up and landed about 20ft in front of me. On a voice memo while watching the bird I noted the bold white eyering, slightly larger behind the eye, uniform gray body, throat slightly paler than the rest of the head and body, wing slightly darker than body with a buffy "handkerchief" showing from my viewing angle. I was able to get a few digi-bino pictures. The bird flew. Walking past the original detection location I heard the bird calling below (I couldn't find it visually) and recorded the call--this is the recording I include here, no visual confirmation at the time of the audio recording. If you want to find it for yourself I would advise heading up from HWY 1, Directions: From the entrance to Coastanoa resort head south a couple hundred yards to the end of the guard rail and turn inland on an unmarked unpaved rd (this is whitehouse canyon rd). Drive until you see the gate posts stating "no public entry past that point." Park, the trail goes uphill on your right. The trail dead ends at a fire road, turn left. Go past the first radio repeater, then keep left at the junction of West Ridge trail and Chalk Mountain fire road--it’s another 1.0 mi down the fire road to where I’ve marked “TOSO” on the berm on the right side of the road. Thats the drainage where the bird was first detected. A little further down I wrote TOSO again on the left side. That’s where I got a photo. Good luck!!! It’s probably about a 4.5 mile hike into this location as described with a steep hill to start it off.
Technical information
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- Original file size
- 160.15 KB