Three Dancers, Two Godwits, and a Lizard

Saturday mid-day--while getting the girl ready for her dance recital--got an email telling me that there were two Hudsonian Godwits at the Piute Ponds--a nature preserve on Edwards Air Force property in the desert 105 miles from my house.  Same piece of land has the dry lake bed where the Space Shuttle lands.
Great.
I have been birding since 1992, and this is only the second time that Hudsonian Godwits have appeared in any part of Southern California--and the last one was last year: a bird that stayed in the L.A. River for 15 minutes; flying away before anybody had a chance to chase it.  When that happened last summer, I assumed that it would be another 18 years before the next Hudsonian Godwit appears, not 9 months.
Well, I thought, maybe they'll be there, tomorrow.
As a matter of fact, they were!
Whew; what a relief.
The only other Hudsonian Godwit I've ever seen was one April in Texas, many years ago.
After leaving the Air Force base, I hauled the kids to Galileo Hill, an oasis even deeper in the desert.  Didn't see a lot of birds--although the Olive-sided Flycatcher was a year bird (how depressing is that?), but got killer looks at the Desert Spiny Lizards out doing push-ups.  A few hours earlier at the same spot, Steve had found an American Redstart and a Kentucky Warbler, but we didn't find either of them.
Oh, well.  The Hudsonian Godwits will have to do.