Thursday afternoon I decided to make one last trip to Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View to look for the Burrowing Owls. I didn’t find any, but I did find a Jackrabbit, numerous American Coots, and 14 Surf Scoters:
This morning I led Software Development’s first ever Birds of a Feather on the subject of birding. 10 hearty, early rising attendees gathered in the hotel lobby at 6:00 A.M. where we shared three cabs to Sunnyvale Baylands Park. From there the plan was to follow the water back to the hotel.
Saturday I went on an Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society field trip led by Rich Page to Ogier Ponds. Along with numerous birds, I picked up my first ever live Bobcat:
This afternoon I took a quick spin out to Sunnyvale Baylands Park to scout out the route for tomorrow morning’s BoF, and make sure no one had thrown up fences in the route.
After getting a new rental car, I considered where I could profitably spend a late Sunday afternoon. The nearest site I hadn’t visited was the Don Edwards Environmental Education Center in Alviso so I headed up Zanker Road to the center. This road passes through various sewer ponds and sewage treatment plants. The smell’s awful. The birds are great.
By lucky happenstance I missed the turnoff to the center and took the next right into Alviso instead. I say it was lucky because I immediately spotted possibly a hundred Black-necked Stilts and eleven Mew Gulls! My fourth life bird for the day. Eventually the gulls flew off but not before posing for some pictures:
I turned around and headed back to the right road. This proved to be the best gull location of the trip. It conveniently offered both Ring-billed and California Gulls so I could practice comparing and distinguishing the two similar species. Also present were Herring and one Western Gull. However gulls weren’t all. I also had my first American White Pelican this trip:
There were also the usual assortment of waterfowl and shorebirds including Eared Grebe, American Coot, and Snowy Egret.
It was cold, damp, and grey so I only spent a couple of hours there. The site would be very interesting to explore in more depth in the future. Sunday, however, I instead decided to head over to Mountain View Shoreline to catch low tide. More on that in the next post.
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