We really lucked out with perfect weather for our birding excursion today: clear skies, temperature in the low- to mid-70s, and a cool ocean breeze flowing into San Pasqual Valley -- a few miles east of Escondido. 

We first ambled along a short stretch of road where big trees attracted numerous birds, including orioles, cedar waxwings, and a red-shouldered hawk.  

Next, we walked the seven-tenths-of-a-mile level trail that runs along part of the southern edge of the valley -- next to a dense expanse of prickly-pear cactus and lush riparian habitat of willows and cottonwoods that border (now dry) Santa Maria Creek. 

Bird songs came from every direction – house wrens and a cactus wren trilling, song sparrows and house finches singing, musical notes of black-headed grosbeaks, two kinds of warblers – common yellowthroats and yellow-breasted chats – announcing their presence, the unique jumbled phrases of the nondescript secretive little Bell’s vireo, and of course the ubiquitous mockingbirds singing their phrases everywhere. 

Before heading home, we stopped at the nearby San Diego Archaeological Center, where we ate our lunch at picnic tables and watched two kinds of hummingbirds busily coming to feeders around the archaeology museum building.