Female Common Yellowthroat

I took a quick run out to Don Edwards EEC in Alviso today at lunch and wandered the hummingbird garden and the area around the slough, as much as anything to get a walk in and get outside.

The place was pretty hopping, with lots of bird activity going on. the barn owl was in the box, looking sleepy. The swallows are in, including a barn, some violet-green, and some tree swallows. black and white stilts are there and look to be pairing off. canada geese are in the marshes on nests. the peregrine was on the power tower. I heard (but did not see) song sparrow, ravens and mockingbirds.

a few surprises to me:

In the salt pond on the long island were three white pelicans and a brown pelican.

I saw small numbers of both white-crowned and gold-crowned sparrows. they all looked like younger birds moulting into their adult head feathering.

While I was watching, we had a big cloud of birds fly in from the west. I first thought it was sandpipers, but a closer looked showed it to be shovelers. Lots of shovelers, my count of 500 is probably significantly low.

In the willow along the slough where the tall trees end was a nice female common yellowthroat that actually stood up and allowed itself to be photographed — while chewing me out for standing to close to its space.. There was a female yellow there a few weeks back for a while but I haven’t seen it reported recently.

A nice surprise — while walking back to the car, I had a sora pop out of the reeds on the far side of the slough, roughly across from the tree the barn owl box is in. It walked out in the open for about two feet, then ran for cover again.

Along disk drive there was a flock of red-winged blackbirds on the fence impersonating burrowing owls. All of the burrowing owls I saw today had long bushy tails.

Location: Don Edwards NWR (Santa Clara Co.)
Observation date: 3/20/09
Number of species: 31

Canada Goose X
Mallard X
Northern Shoveler 500
American White Pelican 3
Brown Pelican 1
Double-crested Cormorant X
Great Egret 1
Black-crowned Night-Heron 1
Turkey Vulture 1
Peregrine Falcon 1
Sora 1
American Coot X
Black-necked Stilt X
gull sp. X
Rock Pigeon X
Mourning Dove X
Barn Owl 1
Anna’s Hummingbird X
Black Phoebe X
American Crow X
Common Raven 2
Violet-green Swallow X
Barn Swallow 1
Bushtit X
Marsh Wren X
Northern Mockingbird X
Yellow-rumped Warbler X
Song Sparrow X
White-crowned Sparrow X
Golden-crowned Sparrow X
Red-winged Blackbird X

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)

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