Arrowhead Marsh, President's Day

Inspired by some equipment I saw at the Flyway Festival, I decided to make my own camera-to-binoculars gasket. One toilet tube and a roll of handlebar tape later...

I had something which was marginally easier to use than just pressing the camera up to the lens.

I went to Arrowhead Marsh to test it out.


First victim: Cross-process turkey vulture eating some roadkill:

Starlings:

This trip got me thinking about the old "habitat specialization" thing. Shorebirds are the classic example of supposedly splitting up resources according to behavior and even body shape. Shovelers have big ol' beaks for filtering plankton:

And a nearby green-winged teal does its thing.

The avocets also seemed to like the "surrounded by grass" water more than the "mudflat" water. You can see from this pic that their heads are turning red for breeding...

Jackrabbit also likes the tall grass.


Also in the grass-water environment, a greater yellowlegs held itself aloof from the duck-avocet-gull party. It's probably working on its novel, feeling deep feelings that others just don't 'get'.


Meanwhile, on the other side of the road, kildeer picked up tiny things from on top of the algae-covered rocks:
Suddenly we saw the kildeer take off, followed by a big flock of avocets, and then the starlings. Who did that?
Me. It was me. Hawk. I'm actually not sure what kind of hawk this is. It's one of those difficult "brown, probably young" IDs.... it was making the red-shouldered hawk sound, keyerr-keyerrr, and I sort of saw that pale half-moon on the wing. It doesn't have the red tail's tum-band, but then, it doesn't have a stripy tail, either. The dark head and non-streaky sides might mean a harrier... Well, chalk another one up to "keep practicin' the raptors."

A bit later though, we DID see a red tail, which we saw lift into the air, burdened down by something heavy and squirming. But then ol' buttertalons dropped it and flew into a tree further away. Turns out the snack was a ground squirrel. An ex-ground squirrel.

What's up, redtail? You put it on your plate, now you have to eat it! What's wrong, you don't like eating near children playing badminton? Yeah, me neither.

But back to the habitat split up thing. Away from the rocks and grass-water zones, there's the tall grass-mud-salt water land, favorite of the willet and marbled godwit. I saw the godwits really shoving their faces down in the mud and they definitely had a few more inches of face than the willet. They were picking up what looked like jellybeans and chomping them down. Tiny clams maybe? Do they eat the shells too? Hmmm...

A lucky spotting this time, a clapper rail! Its distinctive call gave it away right before it scurried across the channel as the tide went out. Right back into the tall grass.

Last time I saw a clapper rail here, it had a radio antenna sticking out of its back. The CA subspecies of this rail is endangered, so they're prime candidates for being tracked for conservation. It's impressive that they are able to survive here, so close to the airport and freeway. Maybe the antenna helped them blend into the long grass too...

On the bridge overlooking the deeper water, there was a surf scoter, or, as I like to think of it, a crazy-eyed clown face duck. Love these things:


Anyway, these photos are obviously still not professional grade or anything, but if you look back at the first photo of the marsh at those tiny white dots, that shows you how far away most of these birds actually were... I think the toilet-tube has done a pretty good job.

Eastshore Park

New Year's day, first birdwatching of the year! Both Tom and I were getting over colds, so we opted for an easy trip that turned out surprisingly fruitful.

Where: Eastshore Park (you may know this location as "behind the Emeryville Chevy's" or "that area you can see as you approach the Bay Bridge but how the heck do you get over there?")


When: High Tide. The sandpiper buffet is all covered up with water, so they have nowhere to go but the narrow strip of rocks lining the water's edge: conveniently, less than three feet from the paved path. Easy pickins!


Tom's getting good at digi-binoc-ing; can you believe I didn't even crop these photos? Nice work Tom! We saw three main kinds of shorebirds here:

1) Willets (not pictured here, but whenever I say their name, I say it like the witch in Willow...)
2) Marbled Godwits:

It certainly looks like it has all its marbles.


3) Whimbrels: They have a cool skunky striped head and a "whimbrsical" name.

We found a kingfisher acting like a hummingbird, flying from high perch to high perch:

Yesterday I was contemplating what birds I would like to look for in 2010, and the first thing I thought was, "it would be nice to see another loon." And the very next day, BAM. Looney Tunes.
A super sweet look at what I think is a juvenile Pacific Loon. Looking at the Sibley illustration, the stripey back seems to indicate a young bird.

The loon was paddling along, and periodically it would dip its face underwater, while continuing to swim forward.

(It dipped a bit more under than this photo shows.) We concluded that maybe it was looking for fish before committing to a longer dive. In other words, a lazy loon.

Finally, near a series of saint-candles someone left lit among the rocks, we found a little group of least sandpipers. At least I think that's what they are. Tiny and yellow legs... small enough to fit in your mouth.


Apparently in the birdwatching world, these little dudes all look alike, and as a group they are just called "peeps." Unlike the marshmallow peeps though, these probably wouldn't look very dramatic when microwaved.

Arrowhead Marsh: Quickie

I had to pick up my sister-in-law from the airport and instead of waiting at the "Park and Call," I waited at Arrowhead Marsh--part of the MLK shoreline. I didn't have much time, but I did see a mighty flock of birds sleeping on the pier. See all those little white blobs there?

Binoc-photo reveals: yes, they are birds!

Almost all of them were willets (plain grey back, white tum. They have a really cool black and white wing pattern that you can't see here. Can you believe none of them were flying in their sleep?). But one of these sandpipers is not like the others. Can you find it?


Hint: It's also the only one rocking out with its beak out. Yep, the brown(er) one with the half pink half black, slightly upturned beak is a marbled godwit.