Recap of January

    January yielded a total of 128 bird species for my year list (2 of them heard only) and 113 species for my Santa Clara County year list, a decent start for the year. Here are just a bunch of random pictures from throughout the month:

Common gallinule - 1/3/14 at the Coast Casey Forebay by Charleston Slough

Turkey vultures feeding in Adobe Creek - 1/3/14 at Adobe Creek

Great-tailed Grackle - seen on 1/3/14 at the San Francisquito Creek. As this creek separates the bordering Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties between the cities of Palo Alto and East Palo Alto, I was lucky that this guy flew over from the other side to be countable for my area.

Although it was a lifer, I saw another one just a few days later at Shoreline...

Yellow-rumped Warbler - Pillar Point on 1/4/14. Although these warblers are extremely common during winter, this guy decided to live on the beach and feed on kelp flies

A lovely selection of seaweeds - 1/4/14 at Pillar Point Harbor

Water - 1/4/14 at Pillar Point Harbor

Chestnut-sided Chickadee - 1/18/14 in Shoreline Park

Lovely Lincoln's Sparrow - 1/19/14 at the restaurant at Shoreline Park

A swimming Greater yellowlegs 1/19/14 at Shoreline Park. I guess he wishes he was a phalarope. I have seen dowitchers swim as well, so perhaps all medium-sized shorebirds have this innate ability to swim?

California Gull - 1/20/14 at Duck Pond

Glaucous-winged Gull - 1/20/14 at Duck Pond

Clapper Rail! The last of the 5 commonly seen rails in the area to be seen by me this month. The California subspecies is endangered, finding a refuge only in the few remaining saltmarshes left in the San Francisco Bay. I saw this huge, chicken-sized but also laterally compressed bird on 1/20/14 from the boardwalk at the Palo Alto Baylands.

As soon as the secretive bird appeared, it disappeared into dense pickleweed, flashing its white butt at me. Speaking of shy rails, I also got my first glimpse of a Virginia rail in the Terminal Road Creek earlier this month (I had heard them several times before). Unfortunately, my documentation of that event was lost when my dad accidentally cleaned out the camera before I downloaded the pictures.

The peregrine falcon sits atop its tower, looking out over its world as the sun sets. 1/20/14 at the Palo Alto Baylands.

Sunset and gulls with awkward telephone lines above. 1/20/14 at the Palo Alto Baylands.

Sora - 1/25/14 at the "sora spot" marsh in the Coast Casey Forebay.

Yeah I know this isn't a wild organism, but I am a plant grower. Also, isn't this beautiful? It is a primary hybrid of Phragmipedium albopurpureum, a lovely species with pink coloration and long, downcurved petals, and bessaea, a species well-known for bright, blood red color. 1/25/14 at the Peninsula Orchid Society Show grown by Chaunie Langland. 

Some sort of high quality Paphiopedilum fairreanum cultivar / primary hybrid. Oops I forgot to take a picture of the tag.

A very nice Paphiopedilum delenatii 'Alba' grown by Joseph Kautz.

I am a big fan of miniatures, especially pleurothallids and my favorite of them have to be the Masdevallias. Here is a really nice Masdevallia strobelii grown by Mike Drilling.

    Now, on the first day of February, I went for a nice brisk (10 minute) trip to the Don Edwards NWR environmental education center as I was close-ish but didn't have much time. I hoped to see the recently reported snow geese but didn't find them. Two not-too-special but still appreciated birds were added to my year list: Say's phoebe and tricolored blackbird, both found in the surrounding bone-dry fields. 

There was a large mixed flock of black birds (not necessarily blackbirds) which included European starling, red-winged blackbird, and our star: the endangered tricolored blackbird.

Also in the fields were tons of CA ground squirrels with meadowlarks. I wonder how they're doing so well with the drought. More rain please!