Tilden June 2009
Tilden is a huge park near where we live. There's lots of stuff to do there with steam train rides and the regular park activities, which probably doesn't make it the best place to go birding (unless you get up early before the crowds get there, which we didn't). Anyway, we just wanted a quick morning out so it worked. It wasn't too bad of a morning, but the birds are quite difficult to photograph as the bushes are quite dense and the birds dart within them, so it's one of those places where you get to hear a lot more than you see.
An interesting thing to note is the geotagging that I've started doing. This works by me creating a gps track on my mobile phone, then tying in the photos to that track based on the time stamp of the photo. Pretty simple really. There are a couple of challenges with getting it accurate, namely to make sure the time is set correctly on the camera, otherwise it will be somewhat offset against the track. The other problem is that it is dependent on my phone being with me when I take the photo. Unfortunately, I gave my phone to Karen to carry in her bag and William decided he needed a poo once we started the trip. Karen double back to the toilets at the visitor center whilst I carried on. Unfortunately, it looks like I took the picture of the bushtits from inside the toilet at the visitor center as that's where my phone was at the time. Trust me, they were on the track. All other pictures are pretty much in the right place.
There are a few things to note here - the wasp's nest is one - this was hanging more or less above the path. I missed it, but Karen spotted it. The second thing to note is the second California Towhee that I photographed near Jewel Lake. He seems rather pleased that he's being photographed! Along with the turtles, terrapins and dragonflies, the birds are:
- Bushtit
- California Towhee
- Dark-Eyed Junko
- Grasshoper Sparrow
- Mallard
- Wilson's Warbler
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Images
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Geotagged Image Map
The photos above have been geotagged and can be viewed on the map below. Click any of the pins to see the relevant information - green = track start, red = track end and blue = pictures taken along the way. You can also cycle through the pictures by clicking the “next” or “prev” links.