Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

Tuesday I drove down to Santa Cruz with plans to do a little birding at various sites before my 2:30 P.M. appointment at Año Nuevo SR. The first stop was Neary Lagoon, a small 15 acre wetland in the middle of a residential area in Santa Cruz. I arrived at 10:15 and stayed for about an hour. It’s a very pretty site in a place where you wouldn’t normally expect to find one. I’m glad they preserved this much, though apparently about 60 acres of the original lagoon have now been filled in and built up.

Neary Lagoon is known for good waterfowl in winter, but winter leaves early in California, and the waterfowl were limited to Mallards, American Coots, and one presumably domestic-descended Muscovy Duck. I did, however, find some nice land birds including two California Quail:

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Ed Levin County Park, Santa Clara, CA, 2007-03-19

I lost a full two days of birding in California when JetBlue canceled my Friday flight due to bad weather. I couldn’t get out till Sunday. :-( Monday morning I taught XML, but as soon as that once done I headed for the hills, literally. I decided to spend the afternoon at Ed Levin County Park and Alum Rock Park in the eastern hills. Local birders had been reporting some good stuff here, and I’d never really gotten up into the hills so I thought it would be worth checking out.
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So far this year I’ve had little time to bird anywhere other than Prospect Park, which, while pretty, gets a little repetitive. (I did get a life bird there a couple of weeks ago though.) Thus I’m really looking forward to getting out and doing some California birding in the upcoming week while I’m in Santa Clara for Software Development 2007 West. Looking at my schedule I have three full days open, and maybe a little extra time here and there.

Here are my tentative plans. Schedule will be adjusted to fit the weather, tides, wind conditions, and such. If any locals would like to guide/escort/tag along please drop me e-mail. It’s always nice to have company. Also if anyone has suggestions for sites I’m missing, or information about tides, best viewing spots, local mailing lists and rare bird alerts, etc. please leave a comment.

Also it would be helpful to know which of my target species are hopeless at this time of year. I will be back in May so I can try for some of these later.

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I’m just now realizing that the new earlier daylight savings time is going to play havoc with the planned Birding BoF at SD 2007 West in a couple of weeks. Sunrise isn’t going to happen till about 7:00 A.M., and I was planning to get going at 6:00.

Can anyone currently birding in Santa Clara County give me a heads up to let me know what’s the earliest you think we could reasonably start on March 21? We could push back the start time a little, but I don’t have much time before I have to get everyone back to the hotel for the 8:30 A.M. first session. Possibly instead of walking back to the hotel, we could simply bird Sunnyvale Baylands Park and then take cabs back. Here’s another question for locals: last year the park gates were open well before their scheduled opening time. Is that reliable? If we drive over, can we be confident we’ll be able to park?
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Prospect Lake attracts a lot of interesting waterfowl in the winter, including two recent Northern Pintails, so I thought I’d take a quick spin around the lake today after lunch and see what I could see. I thought maybe I’d get a Scaup, Redhead, Canvasback, or even a Eurasian Wigeon; but I was not expecting a life bird. However, there it was. A Red-necked Grebe. I’ve managed to miss this bird on multiple trips where either it was expected or other people saw it but not me, so it was especially nice to pick it up in my backyard. It’s my first Prospect Park lifer for the year.
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