Advice San Francisco-Monterey-Yosemite (1 Viewer)

[jurek]

I am looking for advice for planning a trip between San Francisco area and Monterey, Point Reyes and Yosemite, and also separately Joshua Tree NP this and next week.

I am looking for spots for Spotted Owl, and actually any other owls except Great Horned, Long-Eared and Burrowing. Or contact with local people who would like to show them. Please contact me privately.

Good sites for Williamson's Sapsucker, Lewis Woodpecker and Tricolored Blackbird, which I missed so far.

Is Yosemite open in early May, does it need snow chains or other problems?

And mammal-related: are elephant seals sill present at Point Reyes in early May?

best

 

[cassowary]

I happened to have these links handy; It's fairly straight forward from the e-bird maps to work out where you have the best shots to find most species including all those you mentioned.

goo.gl/TVEey5,

http://ebird.org/ebird/barchart?byr=2016&eyr=2017&bmo=1&emo=12&r=US-CA

 

[jurek]

Thanks, but I hope for a more detailed advice. Ebird is very inaccurate. For example I found a 'good' site for Lewis Woodpecker which is a 30 miles long road holding 1 woodpecker!

It would be easy with ornitho or observado, where sightings are marked with a dot on a specific place, or at most a 1km square, and people put location advice, not dump a list.

 

[cassowary]

With the greatest respect I think you may be new to ebird . Some reports are general and some pin point. As I've seen Lewis's woodpecker lots of times if I reported it CA in a hotspot I would likely just mention the hotspot. The rarer the bird the more pinpoint the reporting tends to be. More often than not bird guides report on ebird as well. BTW there are a few ways to look at the data.

However I spent no more than 5 mins looking at Lewis's woodpecker in the region you are planning to go to and found a currently very reliable spot with detailed notes from different reporters:
http://ebird.org/ebird/hotspot/L949309
1)Near Sulphur Springs Creek, 1/2 mile from Del Puerto Cyn Rd junction.
2)These were a pair. We saw them enter and exit the same hole in a snag. These were located about .5 miles N. of marker 18.

If you need more specificity than that, I've bumped into professional guides numerous times in CA who can take you out, so I'm sure you won't have too much difficulty finding someone.