Birding lifers on spring vacation

I had an incredible vacation this spring, as attested by my posts about my time at Death Valley and Sequoia.

While the three national wildlife refuges I hit weren't scenic, between them and parkland in Las Vegas, I saw nine lifer and three semi-lifer birds. (By semi-lifer, I mean I had seen it before, but had either no photo or else a crappy one.) As I said on Reddit's r/birding, I'm not counting the magpie duck I saw, because they're a domestic AND they're non-native.

Let's go in order.

The first was at Red Rock Canyon, a Woodhouse's scrub jay:

Full album is here.

Next, Clark County Wetlands Park plus a city park on the north side.

We first have a common gallinule:

Then a ruddy duck:

I saw more ruddy ducks, many, at Kern National Wildlife Refuge, but this was the closest I got to one as well as being the first I saw.

Full album here.

Desert National Wildlife Refuge, just a little bit further north?

I heard the Lucy's warblers, which I knew nothing about before getting there. They're basically the one US warbler that lives entirely in desert and semidesert. They're hard to shoot, even for warblers, in mesquite shrub.

I also saw what I puzzled out to be a Nashville warbler:

I kept both of these smaller as they're lower-grade photos.

Full album, including some cool spiny lizard photos, here.

Next, at Death Valley, my first semi-lifer, an American pipit.

Showing the suckitude of Google's own AI-bot search through Google Photos, "pipit" returned nothing; I had to go into the individual album for Salt Creek.

I had seen one before at Bombay Beach, which I didn't realize at the time, but with a crappy photo. I saw one at Pixley NWR after Sequoia.

After that, in an area where I was just putzing around, some national forest land near Lake Isabella, I spotted a new member of the wren group, a northern house wren.

Full album is here. Again, a low-resolution photo that I'm keeping smaller.

Next, in what Google Images first tried to tell me was a golden eagle, a Swainson's hawk from Pixley NWR.

They don't normally come as far east in Texas as where I am. And Google Photos is teh suck again, not returning photos for "Swainson."

Next? The second semi-lifer, a Bullock's oriole.  I had seen one before in Salida, Colorado, but no photos. They do semi-regularly come this far east in Texas, but I've never seen one locally.

Full Pixley album here.

Next, an eared grebe at the other wildlife refuge, Kern.

Google was again teh suck on searching my albums, so I had to search by file name on my computer to remember where I had seen it. Again, this is a kind of ragged photo so keeping it smaller.

Also at Kern, but much better? Greater white-fronted goose:

I was pretty sure this was a new bird when I saw it, and knew it was not a grebe and pretty sure not a duck, even at distance, though it was mixed in with shovelers and other ducks. Full album, with many other birds, is here.