Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

I had a tip that Burrowing Owls were relatively common at San Jose Mineta International Airport, so last night at sunset before dropping off my rental car and catching the red eye home, I stopped in the long term parking lot to scan the runways. I parked roughly in the middle of the lot (section 101) and walked south toward the tower as far as I could. I saw a Red-tailed Hawk, one Northern Mockingbird, and one owl burrow but no owls.

I turned back around and walked north. I saw one American Crow and had a breif flurry of excitement that turned out to just be a Mourning Dove. About three quarters of the way toward the north end of the lot, I saw something fly from the fence into the grass. It was getting dark, but not so dark that my binoculars couldn’t clearly pick it out as a Burrowing Owl! It perched in the grass, flew to a new perch in the grass, then flew back to the fence. If it hadn’t been flying and perching on the fence, I would never have spotted it in the grass. Possibly there were multiple owls in the grass that I walked right by.

It was a little bigger than I was expecting. Somehow I was thinking it was the size of a Sawwhet, but in fact it was a little bigger than a Screech Owl.
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Thursday morning was the second SD Birding BoF. If I do it once more, it becomes a tradition. Due to the daylight savings time change, we only had about an hour and fifteen minutes of actual birding, but we tried to make the most of it. Nine hardy souls joined me at 6:30 A.M. to ride over to the Donald M. Somers Water Pollution Control Plant. (It’s more interesting than it sounds.)
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Wednesday afternoon I decided to play hooky from the conference. I skipped out on “Why Software Still Sucks” keynote and the annual Jolt awards to walk along San Tomas Aquino Creek to Harvey Pond and Sunnyvale Baylands. If the DST change is going to take away my morning preconference birding, I can at least get a little of that back in the afternoon.
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After leaving Santa Cruz, I headed north up U.S. 1 toward Ano Nuevo. I considered stopping at Natural Bridges State Beach for Heermann’s Gull, but I didn’t want to take a chance on missing my 2:30 P.M. Elephant Seal walk appointment. I did scan various coastal pull-offs along the way, and stopped at Waddell Beach where I added Whimbrel to my day list. However I never did spot a Hermann’s Gull. Maybe next trip.

I arrived at Año Nuevo about 2:00 P.M. with plenty of time to spare. It was still drizzling, so I hung out inside the visitor’s center and watched a video about the elephant seal’s and the site while I waited for the walk to start. They were a little short on docents, though, so they combined the 2:15 and 2:30 walks, and we still had to cover the first half of the trail out to the seals without a guide. This was a little troublesome because the path that you couldn’t miss actually forked at the shipwreck and none of us knew whether we were supposed to go left or right. The correct answer was left, so of course we went right, and barely met up with our docent Barbara on time. However this proved to be fortuitous because on the right fork I spotted an Allen’s Hummingbird, my first life bird for the day. (Given the time of year and the chaparral habitat I really don’t think it was a Rufous.)

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I headed over to Sunnyvale Baylands Park first thing this morning to see if we could get in early enough for Thursday morning’s Birding BoF. The gates are open, and you could probably get in at 3:00 A.M. in the morning if you wanted to. There isn’t enough light to see by until 6:45 A.M. or so, though. However, it seems to have been a very dry year. The marshes have turned into baked mud flats, and few birds were seen.

Fortunately, I had a backup plan in hand. The Donald M. Somers Water Pollution Control Plant just down the road was in a lot better shape, and a quick 30-minute spin around the big hill (probably a landfill?) turned up 18 species including this Common Moorhen:

I think we’ll come here on Thursday instead. (more…)

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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