January 25th Outing

    This morning I biked a usual path for a quick birding trip. I first went to the Palo Alto Baylands. As time was of the essence, I did not stop as often as I would normally. The first bird of interest I saw was a Clark's grebe in the San Francisquito Creek, a first for this year.

A not-blurry-at-all picture of this lovely bird

A somewhat less blurry picture of the Clark's grebe's very close relative, the Western grebe which I saw later. These birds can be distinguished primarily by the Clark's lack of black in front of the eyes. Additionally, the Clark's grebe possesses a brighter orange beak that is also slightly more upturned (hard to tell with my blurry picture but fairly evident in the real birds). Of course, sometimes they hybridize, making the process even more fun.

Next to the creek was this beautiful mystery tree. It was covered in these tiny yellow flowers. Judging by the leaves, I believe that it is a legume but further than that, I have no idea.

Sunrise over the airstrip

    

    Next, I stopped by Duck Pond to try and identify gulls. I expected the huge flock that I saw last week in the afternoon but it seems like most gulls are late risers and do not go to the pond until some time after 8. Nevertheless, there were still a few gulls of 5 species: California, ring-billed, Western, glaucous-winged, and mew. All are fairly common to the area but the mew gull was a new bird for my county life list. 

First cycle Western gull

Adult Ring-billed Gull

Mew Gull (second cycle?)

Golden-crowned Sparrow rooting through the mulch

    Following the gulls, I biked towards Shoreline Park through Byxbee Park. Around the entrance of the park, a merlin and red-tailed hawk sat on their high perches. As I neared the field of wooden poles, I took pictures of lumps.

Thanks for looking the other direction

The merlin is such a cute, little falcon (if you're not a small shorebird)

Backlit red-tailed hawk who doesn't care about the high voltage

What an interesting bunch of lumps on the ground

This trailside rock was calmly sitting there, allowing easy approach and photographing

This lump looks surprisingly avian. It was also moving.

Everybody look to your left.

Everybody look to your right.

Can you feel that... oh wait it's a burrowing owl. First owl of the year!

Why did the meadowlark cross the trail?

Gazing over Mayfield Slough

    Biking through the rest of Byxbee Park, I added my first dunlins to my year list. Nothing else was of much interest except for a lovely pale Northern harrier male flying right in front of me. Random picture time!

Long-billed Curlew

    

Morning shorebirds

First time that I've seen a Turkey Vulture perched on fence

Savannah Sparrow

Preening Great Blue Heron

    As I approached Charleston Slough, I scanned the area for any black skimmers. Of course they were not present. I then went to Adobe Creek to attempt finding the recently reported Eurasian wigeon to no avail. I did get a consolation prize-ish in the form of my first of year green heron and both the hooded merganser and bittern being out in the Terminal Road Creek. Unfortunately, the latter two birds, like last time, were too obscured to photograph well (of course).

American bittern blending in / blurred out by poor photography

White-tailed Kite by exit of park

As I exited Shoreline, I saw this hunting cat. I've seen it several times before in the same area so I assume that it's feral and well established.  

Although I think that this cat is beautiful, it is certainly a shame that a domesticated animal is living in an area set aside for wildlife.