Sonoma County Birding: Laguna de Santa Rosa Trail

The Laguna de Santa Rosa is a freshwater wetlands complex and wildlife corridor in Sonoma County consisting of 30,000+ acres. A public trail runs through a small portion of the laguna near Sebastopol that provides great birding opportunities year-round, making it one of our favorite spots in the county. The flat trail winds through open oak savannah, riparian woodlands, marshes, and a couple ponds. In winter, the diverse habitats provide a great opportunity to see many sparrows, raptors, waterfowl, herons and egrets, as well as a wide variety of songbirds.

Earlier this week, we walked slowly along the trail and enjoyed a great day of birding. We focused specifically on studying sparrows for a good portion of the day. Though we didn’t fully complete Sparrow-Bingo, we did see 5 of our more common winter species.

Birding in winter gives us a good opportunity to try to sort out all those sparrow calls. All the zeets, tinks, and tchiks can be overwhelming, especially since wintering sparrows tend to feed in mixed-species flocks.
 
Here are some recordings we captured:

This recording is of a confrontation between two Song Sparrows grappling with each other inside a blackberry bush:

The oaks and riparian area offer a nice chance to see a variety of woodpeckers: Nuttall’s, Downy, Hairy, Acorn, and Northern Flickers.

Plenty of goldfinches along the trail:

And lots of blackbirds:

And what winter birding day would be complete without a mess of Yellow-rumped Warblers?

We were surprised when we tallied up the raptor numbers and realized we had a double-digit species day. The flooded fields and small passerines certainly provided some good pickings for hawks and falcons.
 
Here are some of the raptors we saw:

We even got a decent recording of this Cooper’s Hawk calling from a eucalyptus tree:

Towards the end of the day, a Red-shouldered Hawk soared over us calling loudly:

As the sun started its descent, we encountered this wonderful dark-morph Red-tailed Hawk with beautiful rufous tones perched in a Valley Oak:

Another great day birding Sonoma County!
 
You can view our eBird checklist here for the full list of species we observed, including more photos and recordings.