Mokka mit Schlag

Saturday morning I woke up early and started out to Golden Gate Park, whose southwest corner was just a couple of blocks from my hotel. (So why is the Golden Gate Bridge not in the Golden Gate Park? And just what is the Golden Gate anyway that it has both a bridge and a park?) I walked into the park and was immediately confronted with several Common Ravens, which, unlike in New York, are actually common out here. I heard and saw many more throughout the day.

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After leaving JavaOne 2007 and collecting my baggage form the Phoenix Hotel where I’d left it, I cabbed over to the Oceanview Motel on Judah Street for the next few days. This hotel was both cheaper and closer to the sites I was planning to bird over the weekend. It was also a larger room with a genuine ocean view and air conditioning (not that you often need that in San Francisco in May.)

From my window I could see ravens and gulls. I didn’t have a lot of time before dark but I decided to hop over to the beach to see if any shore birds might be around. I wasn’t expecting much on this city shoreline, so I was pleasantly surprised when a quick scan down the beach revealed some obvious shorebirds. I walked a little further down the beach, where the larger birds proved to be Marbled Godwits, just before some offleash dogs chased them away. There were also dozens of Sanderlings running back and forth.

Turning back North up the beach I found a largish bird with a curved bill. After pulling out my binoculars, it resolved into a Whimbrel. It too got chased off by a dog, but I relocated it a little further up the beach where it was joined by a second Whimbrel.

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Tuesday thoroughly sated me on content free keynotes, so I skipped Oracle’s keynote this morning, and instead visited Mission Dolores Park. This isn’t known as a birding hot spot, but it is a known roost for Yellow-chevroned Parakeets. I got there about an hour before they woke up, but I did eventually here two squawking:

These aren’t officially countable yet, but it was the first time I’ve seen one in the wild.

I did get a real life bird, though I didn’t realize this till I got back to New York and checked my official list. I thought I’d seen Hooded Oriole previously down in Orange County about a year and a half ago. However, it turns out the orioles I saw then were Scott’s Orioles, not Hooded. Hooded was new.
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a.k.a. Cherry-headed Conure, Aratinga erythrogenys
Fort Mason, 2007-05-06

These are very charismatic birds. I suspect the white eye ring gives them a more anthropocentric appearance than the Monk Parakeets in New York have.

I had a few hours to kill Sunday after I arrived at my hotel in San Francisco so I took the #19 bus up Polk to Fort Mason Park. That proved to be a wise decision. I was looking for Cherry-headed Conures (the birds made famous by The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill) but I almost immediately found a native life bird instead: Clark’s Grebe. This bird is very similar to the more common Western Grebe. The difference is whether the dark head feathers extend downward to encompass the eye or not. Normally you’d need a scope to tell for sure, but there were several birds close enough to ID with binoculars alone. Another field mark: all the birds showed more white on the body and less black than you’d expect with a Western Grebe. Furthermore one bird had a bright yellow bill rather than the dingier bill you’d expect on a Western. However, the eye is really definitive.

Annoyingly some of the birds had an eye right on the border, which isn’t supposed to happen at this time of year. However there wasn’t enough black around the eye to turn any of them into a Western, and they did look more like a non-breeding Clark’s. Barring something weird like a hybrid Western-Clark’s, I think all the grebes I saw yesterday were Clark’s, and at least one of the birds hit all the field marks for a Clark’s dead on.
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It feels a little funny to be leaving New York right at the height of Spring migration. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours in Prospect Park with Paul Keim and the Brooklyn Bird Club. We barely got a hundred meters in before I had to leave. There were just that many birds in the first few dozen trees. The group had 19 warblers by the tine the day was over including Prothonotary, though I only got about 6-8 of those myself. In any case, I should get some nice West Coast species and hopefully some life birds while I’m in San Francisco, though their migration goes through a little earlier than ours. On the other hand, the breeding birds should all be singing.

When I get home I’ll have to remember to block out the first two weeks of May in my calendar for migration in future years. Maybe next year JavaOne will be a couple of weeks later or earlier.