California Gulls at Don Edwards
After leaving Ogier Ponds around noon, I drove up to Mountain View and one of my favorite sites, Mountain View Shoreline Park. Unfortunately I hit it several hours before low tide, and the shore birds hadn’t yet come in. 100+ American Avocets and several dozen dowitchers were camped out on a small island in the middle of the pond. A few Canvasbacks and other ducks were swimming around:
However it would be a few hours before the tide moved enough to bring them in, so I decided to try a different site and drove north to Fremont and the Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge. This proved to be a wise choice. Don Edwards was packed with birds including Bushtit; Golden, White-crowned, and Song Sparrow; and lots of shorebirds, especially Black-necked Stilt, American Avocet, and Willet. Also present was at least one Greater Yellowlegs.
The streams held more Green-winged Teal in full breeding plumage than I’ve ever seen in my life. Also present were Snowy Egret, Great Egret, and Mallard. Most interestingly to me I got some great up close and clearly identifiable looks at California Gull. I’d seen these at Ogier Ponds earlier in the day but they were quite far away; and I had to trust the more experienced members of the group that that’s what they were. Here they were up close, not at all shy, and the field marks were easily visible with binoculars, even with the naked eye.
A bit of a surprise: I also saw quite a lot of Bonaparte’s Gulls: We have these in New York but they’re still nice to see. Here’s a Bonaparte’s with two California Gulls:
I walked back along the shore, and cut around the hill rather than walking back up and over it to the visitor center. A couple of White-tailed Kites were hunting along the hill’s edge. Several Western Meadowlarks were moving through the grass.
Once I got back to my car I decided to drive out to the Fisherman’s Pier near the Dumbarton bridge and see what I could see. What I could see were numerous Black-necked Stilts and Eared Grebes along the three mile drive, probably dozens of flocks of dozens of birds each.
When I reached the bridge and parked it was getting on to low tide, and it looked like some dowitchers, peeps and other birds were taking advantage of that. However, another gentleman in the parking lot noticed that my right rear tire seemed to be flat. Since I was three miles from nowhere (i.e. I’d have to drive three miles just to get back to nowhere) and probably seven miles from somewhere this was not pleasant news. I drove slowly back to the visitor’s center. Surprisingly the tire held out, and it held out several more miles until I reached a filling station and could put air in it. Fortunately it proved to not be really flat. It just had a slow leak, so I hopped back to Santa Clara, refilling the tire a couple of times before reaching the hotel. I made it back with the car intact, but I will not be renting from Fox Rent-A-Car again.
Total species count for this site was 26. I undoubtedly could have added to that if I hadn’t had car trouble.
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