Some thoughts on last weekend’s birding trip to the central valley, but more from a photography point of view….

When the winter birds arrive, it’s time for some special photography. Special and sometimes challenging. For me, the special winter bird is the Sandhill Crane, which winters in various locations along California’s central valley.  We also get large numbers of geese, including Snow, Ross’s and the Greater White-Fronted as well as our dear friend, the Canada Goose (aka “Flying Pig”), as well as a few zillion ducks.

But it’s the Cranes that I find most fascinating and challenging to watch and to capture. This is my third winter photographing in the refuges in the central valley, and this is the first year I’ve really gotten photos of the Sandhill Cranes I like:

It was also the first opportunity I’ve had to get some really good shots of the greater white-fronted goose, because at Los Consumnes I ran into a small flock that was close to the trails and not overly freaked at having people nearby.

So by all accounts, the trip was a success. When I was at Merced I got some nice flock shots, but to date, getting up close and personal with Sandhill cranes has been a real challenge, especially since I’m only shooting at about 400mm (plus crop factor) and not someone who carries around one of the 500/600/800mm behemoths with me. Anyone who wants to donate a 500mm lens to the cause, feel free to drop me email…

What you don’t see if you browse through my flickr sets from the merced and lodi/galt trip is how many images got thrown away….

I ended up throwing out every image taken at Woodbridge Road and Isenberg Crane Refuge because they were flawed. Every damn one.

When you go through your day’s shoot, one part of the processing workflow is rejecting dings. All photographers have dings, and I’ve found as my eye has matured my percentage of dings actually goes up, because I’m fussier about what I keep than I used to.

When you’re editing your photos and tossing out the dings, do you ever sit down and analyze why they’re dings? understanding what’s failing helps you understand the weaknesses in your technology and technique, and through that learn how to improve yourself as a photographer. Photos aren’t “magically” bad, they’re bad for a reason, and a little analysis and introspection can help you understand how to make better pictures.

The first time I raelly sat down and analyzed my failures in detail instead of just tossing them was during a winter trip to Yosemite. Yosemite Falls had some interesting ice formations, and about every 20 minutes, chunks of ice would break loose and create an ice fall — I spent a wonderful couple of hours watching and shooting.

And 99% of the images were crap. unusable. Almost a “toss the camera in the river” moment, because I had no idea why, but I sat down and started going over the dings in detail looking for insight, but after about 30 minutes, I came to realize what I was seeing was camera shake — despite being locked down on a tripod like a good photographer does. It was one of the first times I’d done winter photography, and while I did most of it right, I neglected to use a remote shutter, and it was cold, so I was wearing gloves, which were thick enough that handling the camera and pushing the shutter button was causing me to bounce the camera around, causing motion blur; what finally caught my eye was that the blur was vertical — artifacts were in focus, but elongated.

I’m very good at using a remote shutter release now, and this is frankly one of those things where if you’re used to hand-holding a camera and shooting moving things, and you shift to tripod work shooting relatively static things (especially through ND filters for motion blur) you have to rethink your technique, because what makes it possible to freeze a goose in mid-air also protects you from motion blur and camera shake by freezing the motion of the camera; with really slow (10-30 second) exposures minor shake issues tend to disappear as well, but when you get in that middle ground around 1/4 second, it can be brutal. And the first time it bites you, it’s probably going to be a big surprise…

And that’s part of what happened to me last weekend. I made a couple of mistakes in my technique, both of them quite avoidable. The first was immediately obvious on edit: it was brutally cold (36 degrees) on site when I got there, and what was I doing? Driving around in my nice warm car with the heater turned up, rolling down the window and doing the car-blind thing taking photos of sandhill cranes, through a lens that immediately dewed up with condensed moisture when the nice cold air hit it from outside. oops.

My other problem? It was early morning, heavily overcast (and cold). I’m shooting at 400ISO, about as fast as I want to push the 30D, and I’m shooting my 300F4 plus a 1.4x, for 420 F5.6 before crop factor. And in the low light, I’m seeing shutter speeds of 1/250 to 1/400. It’s going to be tough getting really sharp images at that speed handholding that lens under the best of circumstances, and in this case, I was sitting in a running car, meaning the entire foundation of my shot was vibrating underneath me, and I was facing forward and shooting out the passenger window, meaning my ability to stabilize the lens was lousy. Bad shooting hygiene on a number of levels.

My worst mistake here? Not reviewing the early shots and catching the mistakes in the field. That’s why tools like the HoodLoupe exist and why I carry one in the bag with me. You can chimp this problem in the LCD, but I find it much better to use the loupe to get a good view of an image without glare. Only in this case, I just chimped and missed the problems until I got home.

In retrospect, pushing to ISO 800 and accepting a bit more noise would have helped, but being more careful about holding the lens, or being more persistant about shifting the shot to the driver side and using a beanbag on the doorframe would have helped a LOT. As would have being less interested in warm than good photography. And in this case, I forgot my gloves and was wearing a jacket that wasn’t heavy enough for the weather — don’t neglect the details of comfort, because they can make or break a trip; and the condensation issue would have gone away if I wasn’t trying to keep from freezing my fingers off between shots…

These are all learning tools if you choose to make them so. Was the trip a failure? Far from it; I did get some nice shots of the cranes, and I got some really good shots of the geese, and even if i wish I’d gotten more (and better) shots, there’s always next time. And now I have a better feel for what I need to do to shoot well in those kind of field situations.

And that’s never a bad thing; and there’s always next trip.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at In search of winter birds…. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. In search of winter birds…

I spent sunday out in the Lodi/Galt area birding and doing photography in the geese and crane preserves. The morning started at 5AM and I was on the road by 5:30. The original idea was to go over Mount Hamilton into Anderson Valley and pop out via Mines road, but the temperature (< 40 degrees in Santa Clara) made me worry about icing and I decided that was putting a bit too much into one day (I was right), so I drove straight to Woodbridge and arrived before 8 to 35 degree weather and a brisk, sustained wind (memo to self. gloves would have been nice).

There were good numbers of Sandhill Cranes in the fields around the preserve. The Isenberg preserve itself was fairly quiet but you could see flights of cranes, canada geese, greater white-fronted and some snow geese moving about. I tried doing some count estimating, the flocks won. (one. two. three. many….) Highlight birds along Woodbridge were the Tundra Swans and a surprising number of Belted Kingfishers each patrolling a different part of the irrigation channel long the road; I counted at least four, possibly five, all of them annoyed at my presence. Also notable was the only other pair of birders out in that weather sitting on the side of the road watching the flocks fly out.

After that I rolled into Lodi for a coffee (and a bathroom; thanks, Lodi starbucks) then went off to Staten Island arriving about 11. it was quite slow, about 100 cranes, a couple of small flocks of canada geese, a few raptors some shovelers. I didn’t stay long, and headed off to Consumnes. It was cold and windy with a sustained breeze; the ducks were primarily looking for bushes to hide behind and under. I parked down in the 2ndary parking lot and walked the wetlands boardwalk and other than a pair of stalwart birders from san mateo county, there wasn’t a lot going on. you could hear a good number of cranes in the area, but there were only two small flocks at distance, and a few larger flocks (about 100 total) of the greater white-fronted.

I ended up walking the tree path up to the main visitor center and then exploring most of the riverwalk path. Along the way the sun finally broke through and it warmed up. The trees had a number of nice birds, a female downy chowing down on a seed pod, multiple ruby-crowned kinglets, a few yellow rumps, northern flickers….  It actually turned into a rather pleasant hike. Riverwalk wasn’t too birdy, but I heard two distinct kingfishers and another flicker on the river past the bridge back to the parking lot. Once I was done with that, I took the path back to the road and along the wetlands back to the parking lot and my car, chasing out some pipits and a rather cooperative loggerhead shrike. Actually two, because when the one I was watching called and flew off, it was answered by an identical call somewhere behind me.

Because I was curious how they’d work, I had brought my 25×100 binoculars (designed for astronomy use); they did both an awesome job of pulling in the distant areas of the wetlands and creating a crowd; their downside is they require a sherpa or a small forklift but they definitely seem useful for a place like Consumnes. I’ll have to try them on a seawatch some day. A couple of ten year olds were pestering mom for a pair when I packed up…

By that time the storm (3PM) was moving in and it didn’t seem like there was much promise for interesting photography of the sunset and/or fly-ins (things like http://www.flickr.com/photos/chuqui/4160779567/ or http://www.flickr.com/photos/chuqui/4161547268). I headed back to Isenberg to see if it was more promising; the sprinkles started when I got there (about 3:30) and it seemed the birds had mostly flown in early and were hunkered down. By that time the fields were loaded, and there were a large number of snow geese as well, which had been mostly missing in the morning, and I still don’t feel comfortable with my count estimates, but “hundreds” of cranes, “a thousand+” snow geese and “zillions” of canada geese, with greater white-fronted being “more than cranes, less than canada geese”. Some scanning the flocks for Ross’s and cackling didn’t turn any up, but that’s more speaking to the birder than the birds.  With the rain moving in and the light failing, I called it and headed home.

I didn’t see anything exceptionally rare or unusual, but it was a fun day (long and cold and windy, but fun)…

Location:     Woodbridge Ecological Reserve (Isenberg Crane Reserve)
Observation date:     12/6/09
Number of species:     35

Greater White-fronted Goose     X
Snow Goose     X
Canada Goose     X
Tundra Swan     12
Gadwall     X
American Wigeon     X
Mallard     X
Cinnamon Teal     X
Northern Shoveler     X
Northern Pintail     X
Green-winged Teal     X
Bufflehead     X
Great Blue Heron     1
Great Egret     3
Snowy Egret     6
Turkey Vulture     2
Northern Harrier     3
Red-tailed Hawk     4
American Kestrel     2
American Coot     X
Sandhill Crane     600
Killdeer     X
Black-necked Stilt     X
peep sp.     X
Mourning Dove     X
Belted Kingfisher     4
Northern Flicker (Red-shafted)     1
Black Phoebe     2
Western Scrub-Jay     X
American Crow     X
Common Raven     2
Northern Mockingbird     X
European Starling     X
American Pipit     X
Red-winged Blackbird     X
Western Meadowlark     X

Location:     Consumnes River Preseve
Observation date:     12/6/09
Number of species:     44

Greater White-fronted Goose     X
Canada Goose     X
Gadwall     X
American Wigeon     X
Mallard     X
Cinnamon Teal     X
Northern Shoveler     X
Northern Pintail     X
Green-winged Teal     X
Ring-necked Duck     X
Greater/Lesser Scaup     X
Bufflehead     X
Common Goldeneye     X
Pied-billed Grebe     X
Great Egret     X
Snowy Egret     X
Turkey Vulture     X
Northern Harrier     X
Red-tailed Hawk     X
American Kestrel     X
American Coot     X
Sandhill Crane     X
Killdeer     X
Black-necked Stilt     X
gull sp.     X
Belted Kingfisher     2
Downy Woodpecker     1
Northern Flicker     1
Black Phoebe     4
Say’s Phoebe     1
Loggerhead Shrike     2
Western Scrub-Jay     X
American Crow     X
Bushtit     X
Marsh Wren     4
Ruby-crowned Kinglet     5
Northern Mockingbird     X
European Starling     X
American Pipit     X
Yellow-rumped Warbler     X
Common Yellowthroat     1
Savannah Sparrow     X
Dark-eyed Junco     X
Red-winged Blackbird     X
House Finch     X
House Sparrow     X

Location:     Staten Island
Observation date:     12/6/09
Number of species:     18

Greater White-fronted Goose     X
Canada Goose     X
Mallard     X
Northern Shoveler     X
Great Egret     1
Turkey Vulture     1
Northern Harrier     2
Red-tailed Hawk     2
American Kestrel     2
American Coot     X
Sandhill Crane     125
Killdeer     X
Least Sandpiper     X
Mourning Dove     X
Black Phoebe     1
American Crow     X
American Pipit     X
Red-winged Blackbird     X

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

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Cranes and Geese and Swans (Oh my!). This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Cranes and Geese and Swans (Oh my!)

I was tickled when I got the notification that this shot was chosen as the picture of the week this week and is being shown on the front page over at the Cornell Ornithology Lab’s All About Birds web site.

It’s a picture I really love and it’s on a site I have great respect for because of the work they’re doing to not just inform birdwatchers but to expand the body of knowledge on birds as well.

All in all, I’m just thrilled.

For those curious, the shot was made using my 30D and the 100-400 IS lens, handheld, over in mountain view near the Adobe Creek area off of terminal road. The swallows nest under the roof of a building housing a pumping station, and I noticed this one nest was seeing regular flights in and out as mom was feeding a couple of young. I stood off about 20 yards away and tried to time her exit — she would normally pop her head out just a bit to look, then drop out of the hole and then spread the wings and accelerate — think aircraft carrier launch.

It ended up taking 45 minutes and 300 images to get the timing just right (i.e., I finally “got lucky” — luck being a combination of some planning, a lot of patience and the high speed shutter on the 30D and a bunch of thumb mashing on the shutter button….).

Just to the side of this nest was another with three really cute chicks:

well, cute in a “I’m pissed off” kinda way. they seem to be practicing their egret imitations. Their mom was also repeatedly coming in and feeding, and otherwise they just hung out and watched. At least they have a view instead of a door that opens down.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Picture of the week at Birdshare. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Picture of the week at Birdshare

Oh my god! He’s got CRANBERRIES!

(a happy thanksgiving to everyone n the U.S… don’t pig out too badly)

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Why does the turkey cross the road?. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Why does the turkey cross the road?

This seems to come up about once a year among the birders — bad behavior by a  bird phoographer. I wrote up my thoughts on this, since I live in all three worlds (birder, photographer of birds, and list admin to both), and decided I’d turn it into a blog post so I can point to it next time this comes up.

The reality is this: bad behavior is bad behavior, and I’ve seen bad behavior by both birders and photographers. I’ve turned birders into the rangers for going off trail. I’ve also done the same with photographers. My favorite “what are you THINKING moment” here was a photog up on the bluffs above Fitzgerald out in Moss Beach, where they went over the fence and ten feet DOWN the bluff to take a picture of a flower.

If you’ve been in that area, you know why I just stood and watched until he came back up safely. Did I mention it to him? no. Why? I’ve found people like this rarely are interested in constructive feedback (and I’m not always in a mood to be constructive!), and honestly, I have no authority. But I do have no qualms about reporting people to rangers and letting them deal with it. Note that since I have a camera, the ranger has evidence of the act, and on more than one occasion has chatted with the person back in the parking lot…

The biggest problem I think both birders and bird photographers run into these days are off-leash dogs and their owners. That one’s a real tough issue. I don’t consider “off leash” to be a problem per-se, but many dogs are a lot less under control than the owner wants to believe, and many of these dogs are being allow to chase birds in restricted habitats. We won’t even go into the ones that don’t bother cleaning up after their animals…

Of course, the core problem here is that as a society, many people feel the rules don’t apply to them, and don’t care as long as they don’t get caught. Or don’t care even if they do get caught, given the abusive reaction some of them have to the rangers and cops who call them on it.. It’s the “what I want is the only thing that matters” mentality. Fortunately, this is really rare in birding circles — just not rare enough.

Here is the scenario: birders chase a reported rarity and congregate to see it once the word gets out. Many photographers are also birders but carry with them digital cameras, big lenses and the desire to get photos. As birders like to accumulate birds on their lists, photographers like to accumulate photos. Nothing wrong with either on the surface. The issues are politeness around other people, and potential disturbance to the bird. If the result is scaring off the bird then others won’t have the opportunity to see it

It goes both ways here. I’ve had situations where I’ve been working a location for a significant period of time, camera on tripod, keeping quiet and letting a specific posture or behavior develop, only to have a birder come tromping up through the brush making enough noise to flush every bird in the time zone. I’ve had them walk up and proceed to stand directly behind the tree in my camera view, ruining the shot. I’ve had them come up and stand directly in front of me — usually oblivious, but occasionally they just don’t care what anyone else thinks.

I had one birder who, after coming up to check out the bird I was trying to photograph, consciously flush the birds when he was done — and smirk at me on the way out. He’s lucky I valued my tripod more than I valued beating some sense into him.

There are bad photographers. There are bad birders. The focus should be on bad behavior, not on one class of person or the other.

I live with feet in all three buckets here: birder, bird photographer, and list owner. There ARE huge differences in behavior and attitude between birding and photographing birds, and they can conflict. 99% of the time, though, if the birders and the photographers just work at it and communicate, everyone can be happy. On lists, it’s important to set ground rules and understand what the primary reason the list exists — and then discourage users that don’t work within that.

In the field, it comes down to cooperation and communication. Someone who gets on a bird first should be given the opportunity to watch it without it being flushed; people who come in later need to hang back and have some patience rather than plow in and ruin it for everyone by flushing a bird. On the other hand — the person doing the watching needs to be sensitive to others who are waiting for them and bring them in as soon as they reasonably can and “not be greedy”.

Note that I specifically leave the camera out of this, either group could be the camera person and either group be the birder. Birders fixed on a bird and oblivious to all around them are fairly common, you don’t need a camera to tune out the universe. A few people skills work for both groups.

Now, on the list, it can be trickier. I’ll be the first to admit I love passing around good shots of what I’ve seen. On a birding-centric list like SBB, there’s some tolerance for that, but it’s easy to overdo it. My PERSONAL policy for dealing with this is this: the birds have to be local to the group; they have to be timely; I post links to rarities or to one or two representative photos and beyond that suggest they look at my flickr for the rest. I try to be sensitive to the fact that the list is about birding, and the photography is documentary to the birding, not the reason for the list, so I try to keep it relevant and subdued. For other birding centric lists, setting written policies that spell that out will reduce the fighting that can happen ON list. (as someone who sometimes has to break up these disagreements on SBB, I’ve tried to set an example and hold myself to a conservative standard. I sometimes fail, but I’m learning…)

It might be worth hashing it out a bit on list, or polling the members and asking them to comment privately, and then set a policy based on that feedback. If it’s a small problem, grabbing a consensus and formalizing it will keep it small, and help everyone understand what’s acceptable. Not having a policy is where trouble lies, because members get upset and start defining policy on the fly, and the fights over who’s setting policy tend to be a lot worse than the fight that led to the meta-fight…

What I’d suggest is focussing on the bad behavior, not on whether it’s birders vs. bird photographers. Like Steve, I have no problem removing someone from a list if they are found to be chronic abusers of the environment or their fellow birders. Fortunately, I haven’t had to. Unfortunately, the last three cases I can think (on various lists I’m on) of where abuse issues have come up have all involved photographers, but four of the last five times I’ve had conflicts in the field have been by birders, not photographers; I think the camera geeks get noted because there’s a perception (not completely false) that “they aren’t birders” — actually we’re many times both.

As list owner I have NO control whatsoever when it comes to stupidity or bad behavior out in the field, a

Actually, to some degree you do. You have the power of expulsion from the list, and you have the power of public chastisement and censure. Neither of which should be used trivially, but sometimes, it can be considered (and threatened). Just as a thought. Now with a list like SBB, which is informally but tightly tied to the county Audubon, I wouldn’t consider doing something like that without consulting with them.

And sometimes that’s the best option; many times these people are known within the birding and/or photo groups. and many times, if you ask the right person, someone who knows them well will take them aside and “have a little talk”. And “things get fixed” without there ever being any formal action or fight. So it’s never bad to spend time learning who the various people are and knowing who you can bring in if you need advice or — a little help with something. getting the right thought in the right ear is sometimes the best way to take a little thing and keeping it from festering and becoming a big one. Especially if the problem is one of naivete or obliviousness. Nothing is going to solve those smirks, though, except a tripod to the temple… but I’d hate to dent a good tripod…

chuq

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at It’s not a bad photographer, it’s a bad person. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. It’s not a bad photographer, it’s a bad person

It’s fall, and the Cranes and Geese are returning to California for the winter. This weekend is the Lodi Crane Festival, which if you’re at all curious about this birdwatching stuff would be a great way to get introduced to birding and these gorgeous birds. There seems to be a lot of activity already at Isenberg Crane Refuge, but my favorites are Merced National Wildlife Refuge and Los Consumnes (near Galt). Sunset (above) is a great time because some of  the birds will scatter into the area agricultural lands to forage for the day, and then all fly back into the refuge as the light wanes and watching flock after flock come in can be magical.

Dawn, however, can be even more magical (just not as convenient) — as the birds wake up the noise is indescribable, and then these huge waves take up and circle the area and head off for the day.

And sometimes you see things you never forget, such as when tens of thousands of birds all suddenly take to the air:

That’s one of my favorite birding moments so far — a peregrine flushed a flock of shorebirds, which panicked (that’s the darkish streak middle left), and they panicked flocks of sandhill cranes and snow geese. That photo contains literally tens of thousands of birds (and one predator), and flocks like that can darken the sky as they fly over you.

Laurie and I usually like to hit Merced NWR thanksgiving weekend. I won’t be at Lodi this year (I’m hoping to get to the Morro birding festival in january, though) but I’m trying to decide when a good weekend to go up and do a sunrise/sunset “really long but fun” day up in the Sacramento area around Isenberg, Consumnes and some of the agricultural areas where the birds hang out. We’ll normally try to hit up Merced 3-4 times between now and February when the action fades….

(and that’s why I wear a hat while birding…. )

(hat tip: Audublog)

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at It’s fall. The Cranes are back….. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. It’s fall. The Cranes are back….

I and the Bird is logging a lot of frequent flyer miles these days. In the past two months alone, we’ve peregrinated from New York to India to New Mexico to Minnesota, some odd geographic choices to be sure. Believe it or not, we’re back to India, courtesy of Thomas of Walk the Wilderness. The return trip is definitely worth it to just to travel around the world with IATB again. See what I mean when you read this massive 66 entries! globe-spanning edition of I and the Bird #112.

via I and the Bird #112.

A very nice compendium of writing about birding. My “teachable moment” is included in this issue.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at I and the Bird #112. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. I and the Bird #112

(or — I did a dumb thing again, and we’re gonna talk about it….)

I’ve only been birding “seriously” for a couple of years, where seriously is defined as “for the sake of birding, as opposed to trying to photograph birds” — and it’s only been the last year or so where I’ve started to feel like I somewhat know what I’m doing. Mostly. I still have my share of ‘teachable moments’, and I had one this weekend I figured was worth sharing.

The bird shown to the right is the subject of my teachable moment. I ran into it down in Coyote Valley at a location where I’d previously found a large family of California Quail (which factors into my thinking later…) and I was seeing if I could find the family again (no) — but I suddenly see this bird walking away from me.

And in these cases, especially with a bird you don’t recognize, you suddenly go into “what the HELL is that?” mode. I snapped off a couple of photos immediately in case I lost the bird and tried to both watch it and get into a position for a better set of photos. The bird, bless it, watched me for a short bit, then swaggered off into the weeds and disappeared. Such is the life of birders, except many times, all you get is that first glance.

At this point, the brain starts wandering through your mental rolodex of birds. Quail? No (too large, wrong shape); Roadrunner? (body shape close, but head and beak all wrong), Pheasant? (too small, tail all wrong)… once THAT fails, you open up the field guide and use it to help you think through options. Since it’s living in the same habitat as the Quail, you start in the part of the guide where the Quail are and look for other species with similar habits.

I don’t realize it until later, but I’ve already made a key mistake in identification — and I’m about to compound it. Quail are game birds. Their primary function in life is, well, lunch. This is good habitat for that kind of bird. The other common game bird here in the bay area is the Ring-Necked Pheasant, but I’ve already evaluated that and decided it’s not a pheasant because of the size and the tail.

I defer further evaluation until I can get a photo onto a monitor and take a closer look. When I do, I’ve already started thinking down the road that this bird is a weird one, something unusual. That is a mistake (more on that in a second). It’s obviously a game bird, so what is it? I finally decide I don’t know (always a safe option), but that it’s most likely an adult female grouse. One problem: they don’t live here. But — aha — we do sometimes get birds that are kept and escape, either as ornamentals or by people planning to hunt them (there are resident populations of chukars in california that are escapees, for instance). So once I’ve decided it’s a Grouse, the logical reason it’s there is because it escaped and found an enclave of quail to hang out with. And I’ve trapped myself into a well-thought out braincramp, which I’ll now explain.

Now, it’s not unusual for bird that’s out of its native habitat to find the species that’s similar to it and hang out. My logic trail is quite logical, but the problem is it’s wrong. If I’d taken a step back and thought it through, the chances of a hunter keeping grouse (as opposed to Quail, pheasant or chukar) here in Coastal California is tiny, and in the area I was (Coyote Valley), the chances of someone keeping game birds for later hunting is beyond remote, and that bird wouldn’t have travelled any distance. It’s not a realistic scenario, so it should have been rejected.

I actually had the answer to my question at hand, if I’d thought about it properly. The hints are in this blog post as well as this one; since I’ve written about it,in retrospect I feel I should have made the connection. The connection is in this photo of two Pelicans.

If there’s a universal truth in identifying birds, it’s that you don’t think about the rare cases until you evaluate and reject all of the common ones. This is in conflict with the natural tendency of the enthusiastic novice, which is you’re hoping for that “rare” or “big” find, and so there’s a tendency to lean towards finding it. In reality, as a novice birder, you generally don’t really know what “rare” or “big” is — because you don’t really know what “normal” is yet. The hardest lesson I’ve had to learn so far is to back off and think through the “what it ought to be” situations before heading off into left field looking for that rare find.

The key to the mistake I made is the difference between these two pelicans. The one on the left is a young bird, young enough that the primary feathers on the wings and tail haven’t fully grown in. If you compare the wings with the adult on the right, you can see the wings look — stubby.

The logical bird to be where I was looking was the Ring-Necked Pheasant. I rejected that as an ID — why? because the bird was too small, and the tail structure was wrong. In reality, the bird is juvenile (probably female, but with kids, it’s difficult), or hatch year bird. It was a silly oversight to not consider a juvenile bird.

How’d I figure it out? I reported the trip to our local birding list (South-Bay Birds) which is full of extremely smart (and way more competent than I am) birders, and one told me they’d birded that same location and seen a male pheasant. Where there are male pheasants, there are female pheasants, and where those exist there are nests, and where there are nests, there are — baby birds who haven’t grown to adult size and who’s tail feathering is still growing in, just like those primary wing feathers on the younger pelican. Duh.

For those in the readership that aren’t birders (or birdwatchers — there is a difference, but that’s a different posting), birding isn’t so much about watching birds as it is about locating them and identifying them. I’ve found myself primarily curious about how an environment shifts over time, which is why I get excited over the return of white-crowned sparrows (“fall is here! the sparrows have arrived”) than I am chasing some rarity like the blue-footed booby that hid from me in Dana Point (I was going there ANYWAY. REALLY!); I love revisiting areas I know and watching how they change and what the resident populations look like over time. Birding is different for every birder, some of us consciously don’t set any goals at all, some are very competitive.

This is part of why I’ve really come to like birding — it is both a reason to get outside where I get exercise AND it’s a rather technical and challenging as a hobby. There’s an endless amount of technical geekery you can spend time studying and ultimately it requires a lot of time and energy to master. It really is the kind of hobby I think geeks can really get into if they choose to — but at the same time, it enforces a need for patience (something geeks aren’t always good at), because if you rush, all you do is scare the birds off or scatter them into deep cover.

And just when you start feeling comfortable with how well you’re doing, it throws you a curve that reminds you how much further you have to go.

Like baby birds that haven’t grown their tail feathers in yet.

But these are situations you can learn from; the lesson here is actually universal, too. It’s a simple one — and that’s that the further you get from the simple or common answer, the more likely it’ll turn out that you missed something along the way than it is that you’ve would up with something really rare. Even if you think you’ve ruled out the common answers — it never hurts to go back and challenge those assumptions before assuming those lights in the sky are a UFO instead of an airplane…

I long ago gave up hiding from (or denying) my mistakes; there’s plenty to learn from mistakes, and if you aren’t making  mistakes, you aren’t pushing yourself to improve. And the more I thought about it, the more this seemed a chance to talk about decision making in general and how easily it can go sideways based on what seem to be really trivial choices — and also to perhaps explain a bit why I’ve been talking about birding so much recently and why it’s turned into something I spend time on and enjoy as much as I do. Who knows, maybe it’ll convince you to experiment a bit and see what you think…

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at A teachable moment (or why I love birding, even when I make a fool of myself). This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. A teachable moment (or why I love birding, even when I make a fool of myself)

So I have finally wrestled Lightroom into a truce (more on that later), and I’ve posted a few birding pics from this week onto flickr for your amusement.

I never get tired of watching Pelicans — in fact, sitting on the water in Arcata sometime in the mid 90’s is really the first time I found myself attracted to bird watching, although I didn’t get serious about it until much later. So here, to bore you to tears, are even more pelican pictures!

This one is really nice because it’s both an adult and a first-year kid, and if you look at the primary flight feathers on both, you can see how the kid’s feathers are still growing in (for non-birders, the primary flights are the long ones at the outside edges of the wings); the kid’s tail isn’t quite finished, either.

Dana Point harbor is a serious hangout for Brown Pelicans, so it’s a great place to go and reliably get shots like this, especially when the day boats come in.

Here’s the surprise of the trip so far — the wood duck sitting in the middle of the Santa Ana River. Not what I was expecting, that’s for sure.

And finally, the Reddish Egret out at Bolsa Chica:

and when you have an itch, you must scratch:

I also wanted to get in a walk, so when I went out to run a couple of quick errands (almost outta milk, out of lettuce) I hit up Tri-City park in Placentia. We’ve had a cold, brisk wind all day and I wasn’t sure if that’d shut down activity or convince something interesting to hole up there for better weather. In fact, a bit of both. As I was driving up to the park, about a block away, I saw three birds on a light pole, and suddenly one bugged and I noticed a yellow breast; it looked like a western kingbird, but that would be a weird place for it. But when I got to Tri-City, I found a bunch more — at one point, 7 on the phone wires over the lake, all taking turns bugging (well, mostly. they sometimes chased the same bug, and once two came within inches of braining each other). With the three a block away, I counted 11 definite individuals, a large grouping. Other than that, though, it was pretty quiet; the only warbler I found other than a couple of yellow-rumps was an orange-crowned, and that was it for the canopy. On the water, the usual suspects for a mallard magnet like this pond. The Wigeons haven’t arrived for the winter, and the Emperor Geese (not countable, they’re established escapees) haven’t left….

Location:     tri-city park
Observation date:     10/4/09
Number of species:     13

Canada Goose     4
Mallard     X
Great Egret     2
American Coot     X
Mourning Dove     X
Belted Kingfisher     1
Black Phoebe     3
Western Kingbird     11
American Crow     X
Northern Rough-winged Swallow     6
Orange-crowned Warbler     1
Yellow-rumped Warbler     X
Brewer’s Blackbird     5

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

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at OC birding pics (and a flock of western kingbirds….). This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. OC birding pics (and a flock of western kingbirds….)

(I know, non birders wll find this boring, but what the heck….)

I had to go run some errands today, so since I wanted to take my walk I decided to head out and do some (surprise) birding as well. first stop was Tri-City park here in Placentia, which was very uninteresting, except for a few yellow-rumped warblers (my first of the fall, but not exactly notable). I shifted and headed to another place I’ve birded before, Lakeview Park, which is on the Santa Ana river (at, surprise, Lakeview and happens to be right next to the Kaiser hospital where mom had surgery). I discovered it when dad was sick and I was down in the area, and it can both be somewhat interesting with migrants and the river channel has standing water and some foliage so it also has some shorebird habitat, ducks, egrets and etc. At one point a little blue heron was found there, although I wasn’t in town for it.

So it’s an interesting place to visit at the right times, and what the heck, it was a nice, sunny day, warm but not too warm. How bad could it be? Pretty darn fun, actually. The area between the park and the hospital is full of mature trees and bushes and is a good place to search for migrants. today, there was a flock of at least 15 yellow-rumps and five (maybe six) hatch year western bluebirds, all in various stages of moult into their adult blues.

After watching the butter-butts for a while (I’ll get tired of them by January, but now, they’re new friends back in town), I wandered out to the channel. The river here has a decent flow and the area around Lakeview has some flood control channelling, so there are some ponds and some muddy shores and there’s a fair amount of green habitat that the blackbirds like. You look over it from a bike trail where you’re 25-30′ above the ground, so views are a bit distant, but with binocs or a scope you can see well.

The first thing I did was scare out a Green heron, who went squawking into the middle of the channel, where he picked up a friend and the two of them flew off to the far side of the channel, loudly complaining. Checking out the ducks I found a few Gadwalls among the mallards, plus one much smaller duck I finally decided was a female cinnamon teal (no males visible) — definitely a female teal of some sort.

Other notable birds found there today included two spotted sandpipers and an osprey that flew by downstream without. It circled the pond twice then headed off to better hunting grounds. I was about to leave and decided it was just too nice a day, so I sat on a rock and enjoyed the view and the weather and did one more check through the ducks…

Mallard… Mallard… Mallard… Gadwall… Two mallards head bobbing (hey! it’s the wrong season… oops. too late… Mallard.

Wait, that’s not a Mallard. Sitting off by itself in some weeds was a duck, green head, but — not a mallard. No, for some reason, there was a male Wood Duck hanging out at the edge of the pond.

Which just happens to be a lifer for me. My third in the last week.

Not complaining, you understand… That’s a species I’ve gone looking for up north a few times — and dipped every time. And that’s why you check out all of the duck flocks; you never know what’s in there..

(note: this location isn’t where the great crested flycatcher was seen a few days ago; it’s about a mile upriver. I was tempted, but this place has parking and I had a feeling the flycatcher was gone, since it hasn’t been reported in a few days, so I stuck with a familiar place…)

Location:     santa ana river @ lakeview
Observation date:     10/2/09
Number of species:     28

Canada Goose     1
Wood Duck     1
Gadwall     6
Mallard     X
Cinnamon Teal     1
Pied-billed Grebe     1
Great Blue Heron     1
Great Egret     1
Snowy Egret     2
Green Heron     2
Black-crowned Night-Heron     1
Turkey Vulture     3
Osprey     1
American Coot     X
Killdeer     1
Black-necked Stilt     2
Spotted Sandpiper     2
Greater Yellowlegs     1
Willet     4
peep sp.     X
Mourning Dove     X
Anna’s Hummingbird     2
Black Phoebe     3
Western Bluebird     5
Northern Mockingbird     1
Yellow-rumped Warbler     12
Red-winged Blackbird     X
Brewer’s Blackbird     X
House Finch     X

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

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at More SoCal birding — Mallard… Mallard… Mallard… um… Huh?. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. More SoCal birding — Mallard… Mallard… Mallard… um… Huh?

As I’ve hinted at a bit here and in twitter, I’m in SoCal this week, because mom needed to undergo a little surgery and I came down for moral and logistcal support. She came through in flying colors and I’m going to spend a few more days while she heals up a bit, just to keep her from lifting things she shouldn’t lift.

The surgery was Tuesday, and Wednesday i got permission to disappear for a while, so I headed out to do some serious birding and de-stress. I headed out to the coast to a few of the places I haunt here in orange county when I get a chance: bolsa chica in Huntington Beach, Newport Back Bay, and Dana Point harbor. It didn’t hurt that there was a blue-footed booby reported in Dana Point…. yes, I’ll say it. I went running around Dana Point for an afternoon chasing boobies…

Bolsa Chica is a major nesting area in season for terns, one of the few places for least tern, plus it’s a good shorebird habitat (and a snowy plover nesting areas) and the southern california hangout for black skimmers. It’s also known as a place where reddish egrets hang out, although I’ve dipped on that species in previous visits. Not this trip because there was an egret sitting right next to the entrance bridge along with a couple of snowy egrets, intently scratching an itch. After watching for a bit I moved deeper into the preserve to check out tern islands. No snowy plovers, but plenty of semi-palmaeted plovers. No least terns (not a suprise this time of year), and only hatch year Forster’s, but looking out on the island I saw a group of larger terns that I took for Elegant, but on closer looking, I realized the heads were white — Royal Terns (with two Elegants hanging out to confuse me). Ten minutes in, I have to life birds on the list…

I walked out into the shorebird habitats and found a half dozen skimmers a fair way out, but nothing else notable, so I wandered back in. The Reddish egret had moved a bit closer in and stopped scratching — I’ll have photos to add later.

After that, I drove up to newport back bay. There’s a hangout area for Great Blue herons there, and some nice shorebird habitat as well as some scrub and hillside bushes that can generate some interesting surprises (anything from great-tailed grackle to blue-gray gnatcatcher in previous visits). And sometmes, you get Anna’s and Song Sparrows. I stopped at the observation parking lot about halfway in and wandered up into the bushes, and this trip, I got — song sparrows and a couple of arguing Anna’s. Back at the observation platform, however, I saw something flycatching, and it was cooperative enough for me to get a good look at an Ash-throated flycatcher. While watching it hunt bugs, I suddenly heard panic calls from the mud flats and looked just in time to see a Peregrine make two swoops at a group of shorebirds. it missed both times, then gave up and caught a thermal, rose up into the air, and soared away. The only other notable bird at Back Bay was a small flock (8) of greater white-fronted geese.

After that, off to Dana Point in search of boobies. And Pelicans. Arrived about 2:15 and scanned the jetty, no booby. I hauled out the folding chair and settled in for an enjoyable afternoon of waiting.

Which it was. The booby was well-enough reported that even non-birders had heard something about some kind of rare bird, so I had the chance to talk to a number of curious people wandering by. I also had the pleasure of meeting a few local birders, including Joel Weintraub (who manages the orange county rare bird reports), who wandered in to see if the bird could be found since it hadn’t been reported since Sunday.

It never showed. We hung out keeping an eye out until a bit after 5, and it seems to have moved on. Oh well. In the meantime,  I had a chance to watch an expert birder pick things out of the air — we had an osprey fly in and hunt just outside the jetty walls, a peregrine come in and chase some pigeons, a single caspian tern fly through (making it a four tern day for me), and I had a ball watching the pelicans fish and fly around. I never would have picked either the Caspian Tern or the Osprey out of the air without Joel’s help.

No booby, but that’s okay. A nice, relaxing afternoon with nice birds and interesting people.

In my last birding note, I said:

If I can get back in the swing of birding regularly (and early), 200 species for the year is quite possible. I definitely need to get to Bolsa Chica to add a few terns to the list, which I’ll try to do this next visit. And my life list is now at 229 — maybe I’ll add one or two before the end of the year, but I’m not planning any trips out of the area, and I don’t twitch, so I don’t think it’s likely I’ll do something too significant here. Which is fine.

via This weekend’s birding adventures… | Chuqui 3.0.

And since writing that, a couple of serendipitous birding outings have notched four new life list birds: Reddish Egret and Royal Tern at Bolsa Chica, and a trip out to Palo Alto Baylands added a yellow-breasted chat and a nashville warbler out in the fennel. Bolsa Chica also added Elegant Tern and Black-Bellied Plover as year birds (I haven’t tried hard on the plover, obviously…), moving my year list to 185, almost exactly where it was a year ago, so now 200 for the year is manageable, and the life list has grown to 233. I can’t complain…

I’m hoping to make a day trip to Salton Sea before I head north, but we’ll see. depends on how mom recovers. If not, not…

Location:     Bolsa Chica Ecological Preserve
Observation date:     9/30/09
Number of species:     22

Mallard     X
Pied-billed Grebe     3
Brown Pelican     X
Double-crested Cormorant     X
Great Blue Heron     1
Great Egret     3
Snowy Egret     100
Reddish Egret     1
Black-bellied Plover     X
Semipalmated Plover     X
Willet     X
Long-billed Curlew     X
Marbled Godwit     X
Western Sandpiper     X
Ring-billed Gull     X
Western Gull     X
Forster’s Tern     12
Royal Tern     6
Elegant Tern     2
Black Skimmer     4
Rock Pigeon     X
Savannah Sparrow     3

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

Location:     Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve
Observation date:     9/30/09
Number of species:     18

Greater White-fronted Goose     12
Mallard     X
Brown Pelican     X
Double-crested Cormorant     X
Great Blue Heron     6
Great Egret     1
Snowy Egret     12
Turkey Vulture     1
Peregrine Falcon     1
American Coot     X
Black-bellied Plover     X
Willet     X
Long-billed Curlew     X
Dunlin     1
peep sp.     X
Forster’s Tern     X
Anna’s Hummingbird     2
Ash-throated Flycatcher     1
Song Sparrow     X

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

Location:     Dana Point Harbor
Observation date:     9/30/09
Number of species:     16

Western Grebe     1
Brown Pelican     X
Brandt’s Cormorant     X
Double-crested Cormorant     1
Pelagic Cormorant     1
Great Blue Heron     4
Great Egret     2
Snowy Egret     2
Black-crowned Night-Heron     1
Osprey     1
Peregrine Falcon     1
Heermann’s Gull     X
Ring-billed Gull     X
Western Gull     X
California Gull     X
Caspian Tern     1

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

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at SoCal birding…. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. SoCal birding…

I had yard work that I needed to do this weekend, so of course I got in the car and drove out to the coast to do some birding. The voles had a bumper crop this year at a couple of raptor hangouts, and I wanted to see if I could do some photography. (here are a couple of shots from a couple of years ago, the last time we had this kind of irruption:

Blufftop Park was, of course, fogged out, no activity at all. I’ll have to try again later.

Instead, I hit up a new place for me, Gazos Creek down near Ano Nuevo, I’d visited it once before to explore and found it very inviting, and even had some nice opportunities for photography:

(lots of folks wouldn’t believe a shot like that exists around here…)

this time I spent my time birding rather than photography, and when I got there, I ran into another birder who was studying a mixed migrant flock of about 25 birds. Lots of interesting birds. My list:

Turkey Vulture 1
Anna’s Hummingbird 1
Nuttall’s Woodpecker 1 heard only
Willow Flycatcher 1 okay, “Western”, but…
Black Phoebe 1
Warbling Vireo 1
Steller’s Jay X
Chestnut-backed Chickadee 2
Yellow Warbler 2
Black-throated Gray Warbler 1
Townsend’s Warbler 1
Wilson’s Warbler 1
Western Tanager 1
Lark Sparrow 1 immature in a mixed flock. Sat up for good looks for over a minute.
Song Sparrow 4
Dark-eyed Junco 2

which includes a new lifer (the black-throated grey warbler), and a number of first of fall birds. About 11:30 the marine layer broke up and so did the flock, but until then, it was fascinating — birds just kept rolling around from tree to tree, and you never quite knew what you were going to see. The Lark Sparrow was an especially nice (and unusual for the area) find, and was nice enough to sit up in a tree for over a minute, allowing me to get the other birder a chance to see it as well.

I then headed out to Fitzgerald, my favorite place on the coast. There’s a small creek that enteres the ocean there through a small ravine, and sometimes it can be a wonderful birding area, and sometimes it’s absolutely dead. This trip, it was busy — more white-crowned sparrows, always fun. A nice surprise and unexpected was a house wren that led me on a significant chase before I was comfortable with the ID — I spent about 20 minutes staking out the bird before I trusted the call, and then came home and reviewed it with a couple of guides and flickr. It spend a lot of time skulking in the foliage and never really making itself visible out of the shadows, but ultimately patience won (for once). another nice treat was having a small flock of bushtits come in, and suddenly seeing a yellow bird flying with them — it was a Wilson’s warbler, which had attached itself to the bushtit flock. While I normally see bushtits as a reason to stop looking (they make lots of noise and lots of movement, and make finding other birds a challenge), that was enough to make my afternoon….

Location: Fitzgerald Marine Reserve
Observation date: 9/19/09
Number of species: 18

Brown Pelican 3
Double-crested Cormorant X
Pelagic Cormorant X
Heermann’s Gull 1
gull sp. X
Anna’s Hummingbird 1
Black Phoebe 2
Western Scrub-Jay (Coastal) 1
Chestnut-backed Chickadee X
Bushtit 6
House Wren 1
Orange-crowned Warbler 1
Yellow Warbler 2
Wilson’s Warbler 1
Western Tanager 1
California Towhee 2
White-crowned Sparrow 5
Golden-crowned Sparrow 2

It’s been an on and off birding year so far; I more or less missed spring migration due to various things, but I’m hoping to be able to spend more time during fall migration and looking around more widely. My species list is at 179, well behind this time last year, but last year I was doing a lot more travelling back and forth to SoCal and that gave me chances to bird different areas. This year’s been really heads-down at work, and that’s limited what I can do, although that’s hopefully going to mellow out somewhat soon.

At the same time, I’ve added a number of birds to the list list — Red-Breasted Merganser and Pacific Loon were accounting additions (things I’d seen before, but not logged formally), others have been real treats: Ring-Necked ducks as they wintered on the pond at the Gates of Heaven cemetary, and a White-Throated swift while out trying to figure out swallows at Ed Levin, I finally tracked down one of the Eurasian Collared Doves in Alviso.

I also finally added California Condor to my list on a trip back from SoCal when I decided to take the coast route — hoping to see one in Big Sur, I succeeded, with two condors playing in the thermals and a half dozen cars on the side of the road full of birders watching. (what’s the best way to find rare birds? Look for birders and have them point). I also finally added Violet-Green Swallow to the list thanks to the juvenile flocks in Sunnyvale (and spending the time to get comfortable picking them out) — and in the last week, two more (for a total of ten), Western Wood-Peewee at Palo Alto Baylands while spending a lunch trying to find a Spizella sparrow that was reported, and the Black-Throated Grey yesterday morning.

If I can get back in the swing of birding regularly (and early), 200 species for the year is quite possible. I definitely need to get to Bolsa Chica to add a few terns to the list, which I’ll try to do this next visit. And my life list is now at 229 — maybe I’ll add one or two before the end of the year, but I’m not planning any trips out of the area, and I don’t twitch, so I don’t think it’s likely I’ll do something too significant here. Which is fine.

Although I really hope I can see a California Quail in the county before year end; they’ve been hiding — I had to see it down in morro bay to get it on the list this year. Of all the birds to miss….

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at This weekend’s birding adventures…. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. This weekend’s birding adventures…

There’s a simple way to tell that fall has arrived in the Bay Area, the wintering birds start arriving in force. I saw my first White-Crowned Sparrows of the fall this week, so I know that my favorite time of year has arrived.

The White-Crowned sparrow summers far north in Alaska and the Canadian tundra and high alpine environments. When fall approaches, they move south, many times more than 2,000 miles, to their wintering grounds in the U.S. They’re shrub birds that tend to hunt bugs on the ground, turning over leaf matter and pouncing on what they find underneath. They’re not fancy birds, but I find them a fun bird to sit and watch as small flocks hop around and turn over leaves looking for lunch.

And they’re a visible example of why Silicon Valley is a nice place to live — even the birds know they can come here and not worry about the winter weather many other areas deal with. Summer, on the other hand, is a pretty boring time to birdwatch the bay area; once spring migration ends all of the birds have settled in to nest and raise their young, so not much happens, unless you go off finding the babies.

That’s something I had some luck doing this summer for some reason, even though I really wasn’t planning to do that. We had a very successful summer in the yard at the feeder, along with the usual healthy supply of house sparrows and house finches, we had another successful nesting of Oak Titmice, at least two Anna’s nests (one front yard, one back yard), Black Phoebe (who’ve learned to scarf cat food), a probable nesting of california towhee, and we have at least two, and possibly three, nesting pairs of chestnut backed chickadees, and all seem to have fledged young. Nearby we have had a nesting Cooper’s pair for a few years, although we haven’t found the nest (somewhere in Central Park) or confirmed kids. They’re fairly common visitors in the back yard, and occasional diners. There seem to be Nutall’s Woodpecker nests in Central Park, too, because they’ve been returning visitors this summer (where in the past, they showed up spring and fall as they moved territory). The Mockingbird families that have owned the neighborhood were less noticeable this year. While the mockingbird known as “pissed off cockatiel” has been around yodelling all summer, we never did hear “Car alarm”.

A new resident in the back yard recently is a Bewick’s Wren. I saw one a few years back in the yard, but this year, it’s been a regular singing visitor, seen or heard on and off since at least June.

As far as I know, the Bald Eagle nest I was tracking successfully fledged one youngster in mid-June, about when I estimated it’d leave the nest; by June 20, the nest was empty, and while I saw the female there on the 20th, she showed no signs of distress, but she sat on the nest and called a number of times, mostly looking — anthropomorphism time — lonely. I also found an American Kestrel nest near there that trip and spent a chunk of time watching a baby kestrel as it started exploring the trees around the nest. It was pre-flight, but to the point where it could hop and climb and “oomph” itself about six feet to get to a nearby tree, all the while yodelling at full volume and making a huge racket. Great fun.I also had great luck down on Marsh road with a family of baby western bluebirds:

and while down in SoCal visiting mom, I happened to run into mom and her two baby Bullock’s Orioles, as mom was trying (without much success) to wean them onto finding their own food — she kept flying to a berry bush, and when they flew in and asked to be fed, she flew off again, leaving them there. Not sure they were ready to cooperate:

Other baby birds I photographed this year included the Black Skimmers at Alviso

Caspian terns at Radio Road (this nest unfortunately failed)

A Black-Crowned Night Heron mom with a chick almost her size:

And finally, here’s a Black-Necked Stilt chick. you may all go “Awww…..”

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at How you can tell it’s fall….. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. How you can tell it’s fall….

One of my favorite sparrows in the summer is the Lark Sparrow, and on one of my trips out to Marsh road in the Calaveras area, this one sat on a fence and cooperated for a really nice portrait.

With migration, it won’t be too long before our winter visitors, the White-Crowned and Golden-Crowned Sparrows, will show up and move into our birding spots…. They’re beyond common around here during the winter season, but the White-Crowns really are my favorite sparrow to watch…

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Lark Sparrow. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Lark Sparrow

here are a few links I’ve collected recently with resources for birding in the areas near Silicon Valley:

• Santa Cruz County Birding Guide: http://scbirdingguide.org/
• San Mateo County Birding Guide: http://birding.sequoia-audubon.org/ (I think the design of this is exceptional, and could be a model for anyone considering building one)
• Oregon Birding Trails: http://www.oregonbirdingtrails.org/ — done some birding on the coast, of course but I’ve been thinking of going and birding up in the Klamath region when I can. they’ve also just added a guide to the Williamette Valley…

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Bay area birding resources. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Bay area birding resources

catching up on my processing backlog a bit, I’ve uploaded some photos of the Calaveras Eagles from March, when she was sitting on the eggs. there are flight shots of both male and female, with the male coming in with a ground squirrel in his claw. They’re okay (but heavily cropped), so if someone has a spare 600mm Canon lens… No? Oh, worth a try, I guess…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chuqui/3605737067/

There’s some other recent uploads including photos of my trip to Morro Bay (otters, loons, spotted sandpiper and their cormorant rookery) and a few local birds up there now, too.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at More Bald Eagle photos. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. More Bald Eagle photos

Loons are one of my favorite birds, and have a strong connection with Canada — look at the back of the dollar coins. Morro Bay is one of the places on the California Coast where it’s trivially easy to get photographs of loons, albeit never in breeding plumage (like most of us, birds rarely carry their fanciest clothes on vacation..)

This loon is exhibiting a common behavior, which is sitting back on its tail in the water and flapping like crazy. It’s more or less like what we do when we stretch after a couple of hours hunched over a computer. Loons, however, tend to look like funky turtles when they do it. Well, they do to me…

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Common Loon, Morro Bay. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Common Loon, Morro Bay

My collection seems full of pictures of these herons. Does the world really need another?

Yes, if it’s a good one.

This one was hanging out on the rocks in the fog, moderately cooperative but as always, with that “you aren’t going to eat me, right?” look.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Black-Crowned Night Heron. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Black-Crowned Night Heron

Very busy time on a number of fronts, so little time to post, bird, or work on the photos. Something about some kind of product announcement or something… Probably won’t change too much too soon, either.

But Laurie and I did get out to see the bald eagle chick at Calaveras. It initially made us wonder if it was fledged and gone because when we got there, nothing could be seen. Fortunately, it was just napping down in the nest, and it woke up and hauled itself back into view. This kid’s now fully fledged and looking very eagle-like (when it was younger, honestly, I thought it looked like a sock-puppet vulture).

I’m estimating from my research and when I think the egg was laid about two weeks or so before it leaves the nest and disperses. We’ll see. It’s now about 80% of the size of dad, from what I can tell.

Nice to know we’ve gotten this far and unless something strange happens, we’ll have a successful nesting here this year…

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Bald Eagle Chick. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Bald Eagle Chick

Doing the export to flickr darkened the image and made the face rather ugly, which was part of the charm of that image. I think I tracked that down to some inadvertant conversion in and back out of sRGB instead of keeping the photo in ProPhoto RGB (non photo geeks, that probably means nothing to you…. Nor should it).

So I did another try, which I like better. Also tweaked the frame so I think it works better on Flickr, the last did too much…

Let me know what you think. And honestly, this image looks better in the large size. Heck, you should see it in high-res!

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Another try on the night heron. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Another try on the night heron

I have actually figured out how to publish a photo out of Lightroom, and am experimenting with how to present it. I think I like this, but I’m not sure it’s final. What do you think?

This one looks much better larger.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Black-Crowned Night Heron. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Black-Crowned Night Heron

I went up to visit the bald eagle nest yesterday to see how things were going. I spent about an hour on site, from 1PM to 2PM.

For the first visit since they started nesting, both parents were absent. I saw no sign of them while I was there. One chick was visible, and spent the first 20 minutes or so up and sitting easily visible (mostly, it insisted on keeping its head behind a tower support), moving around a bit, stretching and preening. it seems to be feathered. I didn’t get a view of whether the flight feathers are coming in, but the body is dark brown and the wind was showing feathers fluttering, not down. I’d estimate the size about 1/2 the size of dad.

After that, it hunkered down and took a nap, basically invisible. I hung around to see if one of the parents would show up, but of course, they didn’t.

I saw no sign of a second chick. I think we should presume there’s a single live chick now unless someone finds evidence otherwise. the one chick seems to be growing nicely compared to my visit 2 weeks ago, and is active and seems healthy. (this is generally typical for bald eagles, 2 chicks to maturity is somewhat rare, three is almost unheard of, from my research)

While out there watching — nothing — I did some exploring and found an acorn woodpecker grainery in one of the mature oaks. Later on, I had an acorn woodpecker fly in that was half brown (the back half), which I’m presuming is a young bird. I also was visited by a gorgeous male western tanager, as well as the usual suspects. Overall, it was fairly quiet.

Being rather boring up there today, I decided to try to start up a conversation with the tanager, so I hauled out my birdjam. it ignored me. After that, I experimented a bit. A western screech owl call seemed to annoy a distance red-tail, who screamed back for a bit. Trying eastern screech owl merely got me a visit from four very curious magpies who sat and watched me the rest of the visit. I’m not sure I recommend that…

Other than that, pretty quiet today.

Yesterday, I visited the hairy woodpecker nest at Cooley. I didn’t see the female, the male was busy bringing food, but never entered the nest and I never saw the chick(s). AT&T was working on something on the road and using the entrance area as a staging for trucks, so it was busy and noisy, so I didn’t stay overly long. I did have a couple of singing black-headed grosbeaks in the trees but otherwise, nothing notable.

The only mid-week birding I did this week was a quick run out to Alviso hoping to get lucky with the YHBB; no lucl, Driving past the magic fence one direction showed me one burrowing owl, but no blackbirds. The small black birds on the fence were all starlings. The return trip showed a burrowing owl but not the same bird that I saw on the way in, but no starlings. or any other black birds.

Chuq, your note is great! Could you give me more info about calaveras road so I can look it up on my map and possibly could plan a trip there for birdwatching.

I had a couple of questions like this, so I’ll post the answere on list as well.

The Calaveras Reservoir nest is easy to find. Take 880 or 680 to Calaveras Road in Milpitas, and head east into the hills towards Ed Levin park. Keep going out past Ed Levin. As you head into the hills, Calaveras road will go left and head north. If you continue straight, you’ll find yourself on Felter. Take Calaveras. It continues to wind along the side of the hill for a few miles. You’ll start flanking the reservoir. the eagle’s nest is in one of the power towers in the water, so if you look, it’ll be hard to miss.

Parking is limited. The safest spot to park and watch: you’ll  along the side of the hill, go through a stand of mature oaks, and then go downhill a bit. You’ll see the nest and tower on your right, and a pasture gate. Beyond the pasture gate is a turnout on the hill side of the road good for about three cars; from there, you can walk back up to the pasture gate where there’s plenty of room to view. If you keep going back up the hill there are other (better) vantage points, but less shoulder room to stand on. There are a couple of small pull outs that can hold a total of 3-4 cars up that way for the more enthusiastic birders. I’ve been watching from the higher lookouts the last few trips; definitely better viewing but not as safe.

You really need a scope. Binoculars help, but this nest is far enough away that to get good viewing requires some magnification. For photographers, 400mm is barely adequate, 600mm would be better, and best light is after 3PM. Be aware that a lot of the viewing is obscured, don’t expect an easy NatGeo cover from this location…

Another nice aspect of this site is that the nest is both easily visible and very isolated. You could throw a rock concert there and not annoy the birds, so there’s not a lot of need for discretion on guiding people there, and from what I’ve seen up there, it’s a great way to generate interest in birding. I’ve rarely been up there where we haven’t had impromptu educational sessions, so I’ve tried to bone up on eagles so I don’t sound quite so stupid.

By my guess, we probably have another month before the chick leaves the nest. That should happen sometime in June, if I’ve counted from hatching properly. Which of course could be completely wrong.

Begin forwarded message:

From: do-not-reply@ebird.org
Date: May 10, 2009 3:30:32 PM PDT (CA)
To: chuqui@me.com
Subject: eBird Report – calaveras road , 5/10/09

Location:     calaveras road
Observation date:     5/10/09
Number of species:     16

Turkey Vulture     11
Bald Eagle     1     1 chick in nest seen. Neither parent seen during hour watching, first time since the eggs laid there wasn’t a parent on the nest.
Red-tailed Hawk     1
gull sp.     200
Acorn Woodpecker     2
Black Phoebe     1
Steller’s Jay     2
Yellow-billed Magpie     X
American Crow     X
Tree Swallow     2
Oak Titmouse     1
Northern Mockingbird     2
European Starling     X
Western Tanager     1
Western Meadowlark     1
blackbird sp.     X

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

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Calaveras Eagle’s nest update, 5/10. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Calaveras Eagle’s nest update, 5/10

Catching up on documenting some recent birding, mostly short trips and lunch walks.  Nothing stunningly unusual…

We now have hooded orioles visiting the feeder, so they’re back. spring is here! And the resident Cooper’s Hawk is continuing to stake out the feeders. We know it takes an occasional house finch or sparrow and once we saw it take a mourning dove. Mostly, everyone scatters for a while, and then it moves on.

and if you haven’t seen this, it’s an awesome video: Bird’s Eye View of flying.

4/18 — Visiting the eagles.

Laurie and I headed out to Calaveras to visit the eagles. We got there
about the time the DeDUCKtions were leaving, but I don’t think I can
count them on my list.

Mom was sitting much higher on the nest than she was while on the
eggs, but the chick didn’t come out into view in the ~45 minutes we
were there. One potential reason: there were 3-4 magpies showing great
interest in the nest and flying up and perching on the tower. Mom was
clearly not happy with this, but also didn’t move off the nest to try
to chase them off. Also seen were starlings bugging the bottom of the
nest, which didn’t seem to bother her. Dad didn’t put in an
appearance, but we did see him soaring at high altitude a couple of
times while checking out the turkey vultures in the air, but he was
hard to keep a watch on.

Also seen/heard while there: western bluebirds, magpies, starlings,
blackbirds, oak titmice, scrub jays, turkey vultures and a partridge
in a pear treee.

We then birded Marsh road; seeing pretty much the usual suspects,
although there seemed to be very few epaulets among the blackbirds and
a good number of Brewer’s in the mix. A couple of western kingbirds,
two lark sparrows, more western bluebirds, and a small flock of yellow-
rumps, including one that’s gotten into breeding plumage. Three hooded
orioles, 1 male, two female. No partridge. On a hill right as you
leave milpitas headed for Ed Levin was a male wild turkey…

Oh, and yesterday (friday) I did a lunch walk at EEC out to the salt
pond and back. The barn owl and chicks were hiding, the marsh wrens
were loud, the song sparrows were fighting them for attention, the
Sora on the far side of the channel made a very brief appearance, and
out on the island I saw three cormorants, one clearly a D-C with a
yellow beak, and two that looked larger and with different shaped
beaks with no yellow at all, so I believe we had a couple of the
Brandt’s that have been wandering around, but I didn’t have a scope to
be 100% sure. Also some caspian terns out on the island making a lot
of noise. No sign of the reported grebes.

For photographer interest, there’s a canada goose that’s built a nest
on a small island on the headquarter’s side of the path out to the
salt pond. While I was there, she decided it was time for some
housekeeping, so I could see two and possibly a third egg. Good
opportuniies for photos here without stressing the bird out, if you’re
interested.

4/15 — State and Spreckles lunch walk

A quick lunch jaunt out to Alviso today in the breeze caught me a few
nice things. At the state and spreckles pond were large numbers of
avocets (some possibly sitting on nests, or just hunkered out of the
wind) and stilts, a couple of western sandpipers and a few ducks.

Stopping by the magic fence I had one burrowing owl on the fence. The
magic pasture showed no more owls, but had both a flock of blackbirds
in it and a large flock of swallows bugging above it; A few minutes
study proved them to be northern rough-winged, and a conservative
estimate over about 10 minutes watching was at least 100 individuals.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: do-not-reply@ebird.org
> Date: April 15, 2009 1:25:19 PM PDT
> To: chuqui@me.com
> Subject: eBird Report – Alviso Marsh–State St. & Spreckles Ave. ,
> 4/15/09
>
>
>
> Location: Alviso Marsh–State St. & Spreckles Ave.
> Observation date: 4/15/09
> Number of species: 13
>
> Canada Goose 6
> Northern Shoveler 4
> Ruddy Duck 1
> Double-crested Cormorant 1
> Turkey Vulture 4
> Black-necked Stilt 120
> American Avocet 45
> Western Sandpiper 2
> Eurasian Collared-Dove 1
> Burrowing Owl 1
> American Crow X
> Northern Rough-winged Swallow 100
> Red-winged Blackbird X
>
> This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)

4/14 — Baylands/Duck pond. Where are the egrets?

Wandered by the duck pond this morning to see if the rookery was
kicking into gear. It was — empty. When I was there about 2 and a
half weeks ago, I could find 4-5 black-crowned night herons in the
regular spots, today, nothing. None. Zero egrets anywhere on site, no
herons.

In 2007 and 2008, my photo library shows herons in full nesting
activity by the first week of April. I’ve got great egrets in nesting
mode as early as late march there, but now seems to be the time they
should be ramping up. Snowy egrets should be starting to show up about
now. It was a weak year for this rookery last year, this year, it’s
running late.

While I was there, a couple of notable birds. As I got there, a hawk
flew into the rookery area; I thought it sat into a tree, but when I
got there to explore, I couldn’t find it, so it must have flown
through and out the back. It was about the right size for a Cooper’s
but I didn’t notice the dark banding on the tail. Not sure what to
call it, it was a medium greyish bird. Definitely not red-tailed.

I also ran into hummingbird near one of the palms. Only saw it at a
distance, but when I saw it, it had its back to me, and looked more
lime green than the emerald green of a Anna’s. When it turned and
faced me quickly, I caught a distinct orange flash. Selaphorus — I’m
thinking Allen’s, right?

Final bird at the rookery was a common raven that flew in and perched
on the fence for a minute, then hopped down under the palms to see
what kind of trouble it could cause. Throw in a few yellow-crowned
sparrows and one white-crowned for seasoning.

A couple of other bird notes: as I was headed out to the car this
morning, I heard one of the neighborhood Nuttall’s pounding away. he
was in an elm in my neighbor’s yard (beautiful male), giving me one of
the easiest photo assignments I’ve done recently.

And finally, I’ve been told by someone out of area that I directed to
the Calaveras eagles that they saw downy chicks in the nest this
weekend. I haven’t gone up to verify this, but from my guesses, the
timing would be about right. I thought I’d pass this along in case
someone wanted to go up and take a look (what? Bald eagle chicks? Nah.
boooringgg……) In any event, I’m planning to go visit this weekend
and see what happens. I may carry along a BBQ and a beer cooler,
because it seems that a party tries to break out there every weekend
right now… (grin)

4/12 — Panoche Valley

Laurie and I drove out Panoche Valley past mercy hot springs, an area we’d never birded before. Nice drive, nothing too unusual, only first of year bird was a white-breasted nuthatch, but to b honest, I treated it more as a drive than a birding expedition…. We skipped Mercy Hot springs and the long-eared owls in favor of finishing the drive and getting some coffees at Santa Nella’s Starbucks…

Location:     Panoche Valley–Miller Ranch
Observation date:     4/12/09
Number of species:     31

Mallard     X
Turkey Vulture     3
Red-shouldered Hawk (California)     2
Red-tailed Hawk     3
Mourning Dove     X
Anna’s Hummingbird     X
Acorn Woodpecker     2
Nuttall’s Woodpecker     3
Northern Flicker (Red-shafted)     1
Black Phoebe     X
Western Kingbird     10
Western Scrub-Jay (Coastal)     X
Yellow-billed Magpie     X
American Crow     X
Common Raven     3
Tree Swallow     12
Barn Swallow     X
Chestnut-backed Chickadee     2
Oak Titmouse     5
Bushtit     X
White-breasted Nuthatch     1
American Robin     X
Northern Mockingbird     X
European Starling     X
Spotted Towhee     2
California Towhee     1
Dark-eyed Junco     X
Black-headed Grosbeak     1
Red-winged Blackbird     X
Bullock’s Oriole     1
Lesser Goldfinch     2

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

4/11 — Steven’s Creek Park.

(nice to know the hairy woodpeckers are back and nesting. Looking forward to trying tog et some good shots this year)

I was running errands near Cupertino today, so I wandered up to Cooley
to see if I could snag a flycatcher or two.

For better or worse, the only flycatcher I got my eyes on turned out
to be a black phoebe, not a Pacific Slope. Oh well. I did run into a
number of rare and unusual Vireos, unfortunately, they saw me coming
and slipped into their Dark-Eyed Junco disguises. Highlight birds
while staring into the canopies turned out to be two Townsend’s
Warblers. The road from Cooley up to the camp area also snagged a
couple of acorn woodpeckers, two spotted towhees, various juncos, four
(or more) song sparrows, and various “usual suspects”. I saw one Robin
and two song sparrows flying around with nesting materials in their
beaks.

On the way out I stopped at the entrance to stake out the snag that
the hairy woodpeckers used last year, and I was rewarded; they’re
back. Interesting to me was that they aren’t using last year’s nest
hold but have carved out a new one; after about a 10 minute wait the
male showed and the female popped out and they interacted in the
entrance hole, then he left again. 45 minutes after that, he returned,
she left the nest and they wandered up into the trees to work on
(ahem) making eggs for the nest. An Anna’s hummingbird showed repeated
interest in the nest holds, and through the time I was watching,
nobody entered or exited the first (larger) hole. The new hole is
about 6 inches to the left and a bit higher than the original, but
still easily viewable from the area near the entrance. They don’t seem
too worried about people at the entrance, but it’s still a sensitive
location due to its location near the road to the parking lot, so show
some discretion when viewing it and watch from the entrance, not the
roadway.

chuq

Begin forwarded message:

> From: do-not-reply@ebird.org
> Date: April 11, 2009 3:51:14 PM PDT (CA)
> To: chuqui@me.com
> Subject: eBird Report – Stevens Creek Park, Cooley Picnic Area ,
> 4/11/09
>
>
>
> Location: Stevens Creek Park, Conley Picnic Area
> Observation date: 4/11/09
> Number of species: 18
>
> Canada Goose 2
> Anna’s Hummingbird X
> Acorn Woodpecker 2
> Hairy Woodpecker 2
> Black Phoebe 1
> Steller’s Jay X
> American Crow X
> Common Raven 1
> Tree Swallow X
> Barn Swallow 2
> Chestnut-backed Chickadee X
> Oak Titmouse X
> American Robin X
> Townsend’s Warbler 2
> Spotted Towhee 2
> California Towhee 1
> Song Sparrow 4
> Black-headed Grosbeak 1
>
> This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)

Man, am I behind on this stuff.

Finally, my 4/7 lunch walk at Shoreline lake

I decided to risk the rain and took my tuesday lunch walk out at
Shoreline, hoping to meet the eared grebes (and maybe the horned!) in
light more compatible for photography. Rain held off, so did the
grebes; the only grebes I saw on the lake were pied-billed.

Still, it was a nice walk, punctuated with one (probably two)
Townsend’s Warblers in the pines along the path leading from terminal
to the lake and the salt pond, a pair of killdeer (that seemed to me
to be worried about a nest, I kept my distance) at the end of the path
up the west side where the gate prevents you from going onto the golf
course, and in a tree near there, a flock of 45 or so Cedar Waxwings
chattering in a tree and descending onto some holly bushes. On the way
out, no sign of the bittern from the path, and I didn’t wander in to
look, but I did see on the western side of the channel a song sparrow
that looked to be dealing with a youngster begging to be fed — isn’t
it rather early for that? Could it have been courting behavior instead?

there were black-necked stilts on the island, along with a sandpiper
that I thought might be a spotted, but I was without scope and it was
too far to be sure, so I left it as sandpiper.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: do-not-reply@ebird.org
> Date: April 7, 2009 1:28:45 PM PDT
> To: chuqui@me.com
> Subject: eBird Report – shoreline lake, mountain view , 4/7/09
>
>
>
> Location: shoreline lake, mountain view
> Observation date: 4/7/09
> Number of species: 23
>
> Canada Goose X
> Mallard X
> Greater/Lesser Scaup X
> Surf Scoter X
> Common Goldeneye X
> Ruddy Duck X
> Pied-billed Grebe X
> Double-crested Cormorant X
> Snowy Egret X
> Red-tailed Hawk 1
> American Coot X
> Killdeer 2
> Black-necked Stilt 4
> Willet X
> gull sp. X
> Anna’s Hummingbird X
> American Crow X
> Bushtit X
> Northern Mockingbird 1
> Cedar Waxwing 45
> Townsend’s Warbler 1
> White-crowned Sparrow 6
> Dark-eyed Junco X
>
> This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Recent birding….. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Recent birding….

Rare Birds Flocking to Newly Restored San Diego Wetlands Area: I need to check this out next time I head south. (via @burdr)

Who can resist photos of Great Horned Owls? I can’t.

Even better: Great Horned Owl Chicks.

National Geographic: Birds of a Feather.

DC Birding: Review, the Princeton Encyclopedia of Birds.

All about Birds website redesigned. And very good, too!

The word is that the eagles on Calaveras have hatched at least one chick. I’m headed out there shortly. My interest in those eagles has spawned discussions with people about other nests. There’s a nest in Sydney, BC that has a webcam and chicks (which just reminds me it’s been forever since we’ve visited the island. gotta fix that). and don’t forget the Caltrans turtle bay eagle webcam!

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at All atwitter about feathery things... This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. All atwitter about feathery things..

I went out and visited the Bald Eagles today to check up on the happy
couple. While I was there, the male brought in another ground
squirrel, and sat atop the tower for a while. then the female left the
nest for a little spin, and you could almost see the “damn! it feels
good to get out and stretch my wings!” in her flight as she played in
the thermals. She ulimately went really high and disappeared north and
didn’t come back for the 30 minutes or so I stayed after that. The
male sat on the edge of the nest and fed, then hopped down and sat on
the eggs. It was a nice warm day, so they didn’t seem to feel the eggs
needed constant sitting.

Other birds seen while watching the birds sit on the nest and do
nothing of interest: lots of magpies, at least one pair of bluebirds,
an acorn woodpecker, a small group of gold-crowned sparrows who popped
out and ground fed for a while, and lots of turkey vultures and a
couple of red-tails. One red-tail soared in while the male was
circling near the nest, got a little too close, and the male angled
over into an intercept, and the red-tailed hauled butt out of the
area. After the female left, we had repeated individuals of turkey
vultures soar by, and one got a little too close to the nest for the
male’s comfort, who get it a little yell, and it shifted directions
and headed south. On the way in to the nest, just after the Felter
split, I saw a bird in a tree and mentally checked off red-tailed.
Really big red-tailed. really, really big red-tailed with a brownish
head? I stopped and got out the binos, and it was a young golden
eagle. It was nice enough to fly over after that, showing off the
white spots on the underwings nicely.

After that, I birded Marsh road. On the way in, I had a single female
wild turkey on the road looking at me really nervously (it was gone
when I returned). All the way out at the end of Marsh I found two
western kingbird’s on the fence bugging, and they were joined by a
male bluebird. In the bushes along the road down in the flats I found
two Lark Sparrows. I stopped where the stream crosses the road (still
some water, but it’s way down from when it was raining) to check out
the area around the stream, and found some white-crowned sparrows on
the ground scratching for seeds, goldfinches, a nice Bullock’s Oriole
male on the fence, a single western meadowlark, lots of magpies, and
in the shade near the sparrows, a funky bird that I first thought was
a california towhee but realized it had a huge beak; it was a female
black-headed grossbeak that seemed to be moulting. I could hear
turkeys in the distance, but didn’t see any other than the one
individual.

All in all, a nicely successful birding day, hitting almost all of the
species I wanted to see (but rarely do) except California Quail, which
continues to hide well from me this year (so does the Baylands
pheasant… )

Location: Marsh Road, Calaveras
Observation date: 4/5/09
Number of species: 25

Wild Turkey 1
Turkey Vulture X
Red-shouldered Hawk 2
Mourning Dove 2
Anna’s Hummingbird 1
Black Phoebe 1
Western Kingbird 2
Steller’s Jay X
Western Scrub-Jay 1
Yellow-billed Magpie X
Tree Swallow X
Barn Swallow X
Oak Titmouse X
Western Bluebird 3
European Starling X
Orange-crowned Warbler 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler X
Lark Sparrow 2
White-crowned Sparrow 3
Dark-eyed Junco 2
Black-headed Grosbeak 1
Red-winged Blackbird X
Western Meadowlark 1
Lesser Goldfinch X
Lawrence’s Goldfinch X

Location: calaveras road
Observation date: 4/5/09
Number of species: 20

Double-crested Cormorant 1
Turkey Vulture X
Bald Eagle 2 Nesting pair
Red-tailed Hawk 3
Golden Eagle 1
Acorn Woodpecker 1
Black Phoebe 1
Steller’s Jay X
Western Scrub-Jay X
Yellow-billed Magpie 25
Common Raven 4 two interacting pairs
Tree Swallow 2
Oak Titmouse 1
Western Bluebird 2
European Starling X
Yellow-rumped Warbler X
Golden-crowned Sparrow 5
Red-winged Blackbird X
Lesser Goldfinch X
American Goldfinch X

And to catch up, I previously did a couple of short birding walks at lunch:

Shoreline Lake on 3/26:

I did my lunch ramble down to terminal road and walked over to
Shoreline to see if I could take pictures of the Eared Grebes.
Pictures I took, whether they’re any good in the backlighting I don’t
know yet.

the bittern was evidently eating out today, he was missing from his
usual spots.

Surprising to me: the number of eared grebes; most folks seem to be
reporting low numbers of the birds on the lake. I sat down on the
shore and hoped they’d come close, and started noticing multiple
groups of the birds, plus a few hanging out with the goldeneyes. At
one point, I could count 13 distinct individuals in sight — and
perhaps as many as 15, depending on which diving birds were timing it
to confuse me. All are either in breeding plumage or close to it,
really gorgeous, if you haven’t gotten down there to see them. Early
morning is probably better (as usual for Shoreline) to avoid sun glare
and backlighting problems.

Also a good number (10+) pied-bills, including some vocalizing at each
other.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: do-not-reply@ebird.org
> Date: March 26, 2009 2:39:59 PM PDT
> To: chuqui@me.com
> Subject: eBird Report – shoreline lake, mountain view , 3/26/09
>
>
>
> Location: shoreline lake, mountain view
> Observation date: 3/26/09
> Number of species: 14
>
> Canada Goose X
> Surf Scoter X
> Common Goldeneye X
> Ruddy Duck X
> Pied-billed Grebe 10
> Eared Grebe 13
> Snowy Egret 2
> Willet X
> Mourning Dove X
> Anna’s Hummingbird X
> American Crow X
> California Towhee 1
> White-crowned Sparrow X
> House Finch X
>
> This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)

and

Ulistac Nature Preserve in Santa Clara on the 24th

I did a lunch walk at Ulistac today, starting about noon and spending about 45 minutes there, entering at the south gate and walking up the path down the middle of the area, then out the north gate and back down the sidewalk.

Special bird for me today was a Nashville Warbler (life #222) in a Willow in the Northern area of the park; it was lurking in a tree where two chickadees were having a very animated “get to know each other” conversation, which is what drew me in to happen to notice the other bird hop (thank you, chickadees, may your brood be large and healthy).

raptors included two Cooper’s Hawks, one flying, and a red-shouldered hawk that flew in and landed. I did see a Northern flicker, but not well enough to see if it was the Intergrade. I also saw two woodpeckers, neither well enough to document, but one I believe was a downy, and the other was — a woodpecker.

Lots of yellow-rumps, the southern part of the park was dominated by mockingbirds including one showing serious territoriality against another mockingbird. The northern part of the park had scrub jays in it. The Bewick’s Wren and the juncos were heard only. No sign of the Kingbird or other recent reports.

Begin forwarded message:

From: do-not-reply@ebird.org
Date: March 24, 2009 6:33:13 PM PDT (CA)
To: chuqui@me.com
Subject: eBird Report – Ulistac Nature Area , 3/24/09

Location:     Ulistac Nature Area
Observation date:     3/24/09
Number of species:     19

Turkey Vulture     1
Cooper’s Hawk     2
Red-shouldered Hawk     1
Mourning Dove     X
Anna’s Hummingbird     X
Northern Flicker     1
Western Scrub-Jay     X
American Crow     X
Chestnut-backed Chickadee     2
Bewick’s Wren     1
Northern Mockingbird     X
Nashville Warbler     1
Yellow-rumped Warbler     X
California Towhee     1
White-crowned Sparrow     X
Golden-crowned Sparrow     X
Dark-eyed Junco     X
House Finch     X
House Sparrow     X

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

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Bald Eagles and Kingbirds and Sparrows, oh my!. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Bald Eagles and Kingbirds and Sparrows, oh my!