Pink Thursday, Bless the Long Weekend

     One word describes the first half of my February: fascinating.

2/8/15

    As during the 7th of February, I was attending the SLAC regional Science Bowl competition, my usual Saturday birding was shifted to Sunday. To make a long story short: I biked to the Baylands, it poured, I biked home. Bird highlights included a Turkey Vulture still flying while the storm raged and a possible Brewer's Duck (Gadwall x Mallard) but it could have been the child of some sort of domestic Mallard breed with the wild type or some other combination. No pictures were taken that day for obvious reasons.

2/12/15

    Thank you Palo Alto Unified School District for giving us a 5 day long weekend. The 12th of February was surely the most memorable Thursday of my life, filled with many interesting people, birds, and Nicki Minaj's Moment For Life (only the Nicki Minaj verse of course as Drake's part is kinda meh) playing nonstop in my head. I woke up at 5:30 am and ate a quick breakfast before leaving, a great decision. 

    Thankfully, I only made one true mistake in travel for the whole day, and it happened less than half a mile from my house when I turned right instead of left. Fortunately, I realized my wrong turn after a minute and from that point on, it was smooth sailing for the rest of the day. Or I guess relatively smooth sailing. 

    While I traveled up Arastradero towards Foothill Expressway, a man was biking at snail's pace and instead of conventional bike lights, he had strung bright blue Christmas LEDs completely over his vehicle's frame and was blasting a radio at maximum volume, filling my ears with an advertisement about some local sales, a very strange sight that made me wonder if I had fully awaken.

    Anyways, I continued my trip and passed the first high school of the day: Gunn High. While I started my Foothill Expressway leg of the journey, my first bird of the day was heard with several Killdeer calling from the fields in the darkness. I don't remember much else from this part as bird activity was not very impressive but I also recall hearing the call of a Varied Thrush. The sun was just starting to rise as I turned onto Homestead Road, passing by my second high school of the day.

I had always admired this beautiful landmark from below when going on 280 by car and never realized that I would ever be biking across it during the sunrise to go birding! Ladies and gentlemen, the lovely Don Burnett Bicycle-Pedestrian Bridge.

Oh such a beautiful piece of art.

Getting off the bridge, I was greeted by these adorable but unfortunately fake, (not very anatomically correct) California Quail. 

    It was then a nice little cycling through Cupertino, and at 7:30, I stopped briefly at Union Church (a location familiar to me as my choir rehearsals used to occur there) to use the bathrooms. However, I went to the wrong side of the building to open the door to my desired location and accidentally stumbled upon an unlocked office... As I opened, flashing lights and a blaring alarm gave me an impression that I wasn't welcome. In a bit of a hurry, I searched around for people and found a group doing charity work in the adjacent building. Speaking in Mandarin, they told me they never used that building and that they were quite puzzled as to why the office was locked. They then directed me to their leader, who spoke English, but was equally confused. Thankfully, the people were really nice and they told me that I could get on my way and if the police came, they would take care of it. Most importantly, they let me use the bathroom. Thanks!

    I then resisted the urge to get PMT, ate a handful of dried figs, and went past a ton of ups and downs. Passing Saratoga High School at around 8, I realized that their school district did not have the day off and I chuckled to myself silently as I watched them go to class. A few more ups and downs and I reached my first destination at the Los Gatos Creek Trail.

   With that all out of the way, I will now talk about BIRDS. I was filled with a huge sense of relief as I finally arrived to the first destination and headed to where a rare overwintering Black-throated Blue Warbler had been reported. Next to the creek, I met another birder named Janey who was photographing the dippers. Although the bird had recently flown off, I spotted it a couple minutes later when it made its way back to gather nesting material.

Rather unflattering picture of the bird in not the most photogenic place but the Ouzel's antics were still very fun to watch.

Bathing in the stream. I didn't stick around to take a picture of the bird with its famed appearance of closed eyelids (think "avatar state") before diving. Janey got some pretty sick shots of the Dipper and here is a link to my favorite picture of the bird's nest: Dipper Nest

and a link to her flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/122028724@N07/

Flowers in the foreground and dipper in the very far background. 

A nice patch of Turkey Tail Fungi - Trametes sp., likely versicolor but apparently lots of variation exists in this genus.

    I then walked back along the trail to where the warbler had been previously reported. After a few minutes, I saw it for a brief moment as it flew across the trail into the trees, showing me its very distinctive wing and tail patches on a dark upperside. Then, it was 2 hours of fruitless waiting in an attempt to get actual pictures before I finally gave up and decided to travel on. 

    I continued on the Los Gatos Creek trail and arrived at Vasona Lake County Park. In the surprisingly quiet picnic area, I scanned over the lake, seeing if the Slaty-backed Gull seen a few times in late January was still around. Although there was a decent diversity of larids, the ABA Code 3 vagrant was not present. I then ate my sandwich lunch while watching a Canada Goose getting a little too close for comfort.

No, my food

Seriously go away (these pictures were taken from my phone)

Red-breasted Sapsucker was a nice surprise-ish as I finished up eating.

Probably my best view ever of this striking West Coast specialty

Among the gull mix were the usual California, Herring, Glaucous-winged, and Ring-billed in addition to the less expected Mew and Thayer's (pictured here).

Landing gear of Herring Gull

Gr9 Egret

An interesting combination of Mexican Sage and Egret in the same shot.

Black-crowned Night Heron hiding in the willows

    Following Vasona, I went through Los Gatos Creek County Park to hopefully see Ring-necked Ducks and / or Osprey. However, although the percolation ponds had water in them, they had very little bird diversity, consisting mostly of Canada Geese and American Coots combined with a few scattered Buffleheads, Mallards, Lesser Scaups, and Ruddy Ducks, a far cry from last year. Earlier this year, these water bodies were completely dry from the drought and it seemed like bulldozers had also done some work on the dry bottoms due to the concentric lines of disturbed soil. Overall, this area was quite a disappointment, but hopefully next year life will return more strongly.

An early Northern Rough-winged Swallow seen as I continued my northward journey back to the Bay. It's interesting how much I take swallows for granted during the summer months and during the winter, get so excited every time I see their flight pattern.

Landing by Los Gatos Creek

As I passed by the casting ponds (never knew these things existed until that day), I came across this Bullfrog. At first I thought it was fake due to its monstrous size, immobility, and the fact that it was sitting on concrete in full sun but after a few moments of puzzled staring, its reality became apparent. Then again, what is reality? Do we even exist at all?  What is the universe? What is life? 

Just one of the many lines of basking Red-eared Sliders. Too bad these adorable turtles aren't native.

As I traveled further downstream with the Los Gatos Creek, I met my first Painted Lady of the year.

    Then, it was a few turns into downtown San Jose in Willow Glen. My second time coming to this area by bike, I was seeking another stakeout bird: the Townsend's Solitaire. As I arrived at the house it was reported at, a group of birders were looking at a tall tree in the backyard. The bird we gawked at turned out to be a mockingbird and we then turned our attention back to the camphor tree in the front yard the bird was previously found in. Half a minute later, while the others looked high in the branches, I noticed a motionless bird literally 8 feet above our heads and with that, the group all got satisfying looks at the vagrant thrush.

Ending up in a suburban camphor tree in San Jose from mountainous areas full of junipers, this has to be one of the most random vagrants I have ever seen. Like most passerine wanderers, its chances of making it back home are probably extremely slim so I bid it the best of luck...

    After enjoying some nice conversation with the other people around, it was finally time to go home. The first leg consisted of following the path of another water body, the Guadalupe River, as it wound through downtown San Jose towards the Bay.

The good news was that I was in the right place. The bad news was that I had to go 6.7 miles and then an additional 8 or so miles with 1 blueberry fig bar to sustain my pretty starved body. It was a very delicious fig bar. However, it was just 1 delicious fig bar. 

At this rest point, I had great views from above of some Common Mergansers. These ducks are always a pleasure to see and it was quite fun watching this male swimming up the rapids a few seconds before taking this shot.

Preening on the rocks

Also a large number of stink bugs in this bush, many copulating. I think this is the introduced Nezara viridula but the weird dark v-shaped marking on the scutellum on the right individual doesn't seem right... Any experts who ever read this please chime in.

Never would I have ever thought that I would bike past the San Jose airport. I later passed by the hands mural and it was quite a surreal moment as like the pedestrian bridge, I had always admired the piece of art but never got to see it from outside a car. About 4 miles into the Guadalupe River Trail, I ate the first half of the delicious fig bar.

Monarch at Sunnyvale Baylands

Green Heron at Sunnyvale WPCP. As I stopped to watch the heron, I ate the last of my food reserves, the second half of my delicious fig bar, and pathetically powered my way in the headwind towards Mountain View.

Aleutian Cackling and Canada Geese at the Shoreline kite-flying area. I hoped that I could refuel at the Shoreline Cafe before finishing the final leg of my migration to Palo Alto but turns out that the feeding grounds were closed... At least I added the Great-tailed Grackle to my day list as I forlornly walked away from there.

    Made it back home at 6. Ate half a box of Samoas. Took cold shower. Went to sleep. Woke up. Listened to Moment For Life again.

    The 12th of February was one of my best birding days for a while, especially by bike. I got 3 awesome life birds and a decent 110 avian species seen/heard throughout my 12 ish hours out. Although the fruitless waiting for the Black-throated Blue Warbler's reappearance really was a bummer, preventing me from taking a short trip to Alviso on the way back, and the sorry state of the Oka Ponds were disheartening, I had a really great time with interesting encounters of the human and of the other vertebrate kind. Until next time, enjoy life and love nature!