ovenbird43
Well-known member
I’ve been to California several times, and while I always looked into it, my previous visits never coincided with any of Debi Shearwater’s scheduled pelagic trips. So when I learned that this season would be her last before retirement, I realized it was now or never, so I booked a couple of her trips. With other major travel already planned for the year, I made it a short trip to save time and money, cashing in some airline miles for the flight and scheduling only 3 full days in California, 2 of which were back-to-back pelagic trips with Shearwater Journeys.
Cashing in airline miles often leaves one with less than ideal route choices – in this case, I drove an hour and a half to New Orleans rather than flying from the smaller Gulfport airport, and had a seemingly unnecessary 5-hour layover in Seattle. I was tempted to try to get on one of the many earlier flights to San Jose, and it was only the thought that I’d still have to wait for my luggage to arrive that stopped me from trying – little did I know that my luggage was on the way to Salt Lake City and I wouldn’t be receiving it until the next day anyway. Oops! Otherwise the journey was uneventful if long, there was still daylight when I picked up my rental car in San Jose but I was wiped out and jet lagged, so I checked into my AirBnB in the south part of the city, got some food, and went right to bed.
Oct 4
With jet lag and an early bed time I had no trouble waking up before my alarm, ready for some birding. I planned to start at the San Francisquito trail in Palo Alto, along the south shore of the bay, targeting a Ruff that had been seen reliably for the last week. I misjudged local sunrise and ended up sitting in the parking lot for a bit waiting for it to get light, listening to White-crowned and Golden-crowned Sparrows and Black Phoebes as they began to sing in the twilight. Once it was light enough for shorebird ID I set out along the trail. The birds in the parking lot kept distracting me – no lifers to be expected but so much fun to see western species and California specialties – California Towhee, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Anna’s Hummingbird, the Audubon’s subspecies of Yellow-rumped Warbler, Nuttall’s Woodpecker.
Eventually I made it to the actual creek, a narrow tidal creek with wide mud banks exposed in the low tide and teeming with shorebirds. Mostly they were Western and Least Sandpipers and Semipalmated Plovers, with small smatterings of Greater Yellowlegs and Black-bellied Plover, and one Long-billed Curlew. Where the trail makes a sharp turn toward the bay the water got deeper, with fewer shorebirds but a nice Clark’s Grebe in the channel. I turned around and took the alternate fork of the trail across a bridge, and saw a pond out off the trail that held a good number of medium-sized roosting shorebirds. Annoyed that I hadn’t brought my scope, and doubly annoyed that I wouldn’t have been able to use it anyway since I didn’t have my luggage, I scrutinized the distant birds with bins and camera, trying to turn one of them into a Ruff. Alas, I eventually determined that they were definitely all Black-necked Stilts and Greater Yellowlegs. At this point I was pretty cold, still wearing my shorts that were appropriate for the Gulf Coast but not for an October morning in central California. I walked back toward the parking lot, picking up a few different shorebirds but no Ruff.
I was about to leave when a local birder asked me if I had seen the Ruff, we talked for a few minutes and he told me it had actually been hanging out in the small pond behind the parking lot, mostly hidden by trees and shrubs. I thanked him and went to look, and sure enough it was there! Great views of a juvenile Ruff foraging with both yellowlegs species – a long-awaited lifer. Yay! Now it was off to the airport to retrieve my luggage.
Cashing in airline miles often leaves one with less than ideal route choices – in this case, I drove an hour and a half to New Orleans rather than flying from the smaller Gulfport airport, and had a seemingly unnecessary 5-hour layover in Seattle. I was tempted to try to get on one of the many earlier flights to San Jose, and it was only the thought that I’d still have to wait for my luggage to arrive that stopped me from trying – little did I know that my luggage was on the way to Salt Lake City and I wouldn’t be receiving it until the next day anyway. Oops! Otherwise the journey was uneventful if long, there was still daylight when I picked up my rental car in San Jose but I was wiped out and jet lagged, so I checked into my AirBnB in the south part of the city, got some food, and went right to bed.
Oct 4
With jet lag and an early bed time I had no trouble waking up before my alarm, ready for some birding. I planned to start at the San Francisquito trail in Palo Alto, along the south shore of the bay, targeting a Ruff that had been seen reliably for the last week. I misjudged local sunrise and ended up sitting in the parking lot for a bit waiting for it to get light, listening to White-crowned and Golden-crowned Sparrows and Black Phoebes as they began to sing in the twilight. Once it was light enough for shorebird ID I set out along the trail. The birds in the parking lot kept distracting me – no lifers to be expected but so much fun to see western species and California specialties – California Towhee, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Anna’s Hummingbird, the Audubon’s subspecies of Yellow-rumped Warbler, Nuttall’s Woodpecker.
Eventually I made it to the actual creek, a narrow tidal creek with wide mud banks exposed in the low tide and teeming with shorebirds. Mostly they were Western and Least Sandpipers and Semipalmated Plovers, with small smatterings of Greater Yellowlegs and Black-bellied Plover, and one Long-billed Curlew. Where the trail makes a sharp turn toward the bay the water got deeper, with fewer shorebirds but a nice Clark’s Grebe in the channel. I turned around and took the alternate fork of the trail across a bridge, and saw a pond out off the trail that held a good number of medium-sized roosting shorebirds. Annoyed that I hadn’t brought my scope, and doubly annoyed that I wouldn’t have been able to use it anyway since I didn’t have my luggage, I scrutinized the distant birds with bins and camera, trying to turn one of them into a Ruff. Alas, I eventually determined that they were definitely all Black-necked Stilts and Greater Yellowlegs. At this point I was pretty cold, still wearing my shorts that were appropriate for the Gulf Coast but not for an October morning in central California. I walked back toward the parking lot, picking up a few different shorebirds but no Ruff.
I was about to leave when a local birder asked me if I had seen the Ruff, we talked for a few minutes and he told me it had actually been hanging out in the small pond behind the parking lot, mostly hidden by trees and shrubs. I thanked him and went to look, and sure enough it was there! Great views of a juvenile Ruff foraging with both yellowlegs species – a long-awaited lifer. Yay! Now it was off to the airport to retrieve my luggage.