Time for some fledgling and nestling photos

June 1st was a banner day for birding. Heidi and I not only visited Shoreline in Mountain View, but we also visited Palo Alto Baylands. And the best part about visiting on the first of June was the number of "baby" birds that were roaming around. Here are a few of the photos I took of the "youngsters" at the Baylands.

Above is a fairly young American Avocet walking around on its own. Mama or Papa was probably watching closely. I think the parent was no more than twenty feet away. Below is another American Avocet with its chick in the mudflats. I would assume the chick was in no danger. Can you imagine how muddy this little one was? I'm glad it wasn't one of my own!

This babe is a black-necked stilt. Again, a parent wasn't too far off.

And here is another parent with its chick. This one didn't really look like it was ready yet to go into the water. These little chicks are so fluffy, and they don't stay that way for long. I'm glad we got to see these little offspring. That was quite a treat.

And here are a couple of cliff swallow nestlings. I'm sure by now they are no longer nestlings or fledglings. I'm fairly certain they are flying around with their folks all over the Baylands.

And, of course, we had to get at least one photo of a mother mallard and her darling little ducklings. This mama had nine ducklings following her.

I have more photos to post from this outing, although these were the only "baby" photos I had. Hopefully, I will post the next set of photos sooner than it took me to post this one!

MIA - again!

Well, I've been missing in action again! Another whole month has gone by; I can't believe I didn't post anything during the month of June. Granted, we've been busy, but it seemed like the desire wasn't there as well. At least I've been trying to keep up with everyone else's blogs, and commenting now and then. I spent a few minutes going over my photos trying to find the last ones I posted. And now I realize I've got quite a few photos to share and posts to blog about.

The last post I mentioned going to our local county park where there was a "population explosion" regarding all the Canada geese we saw around the lake and picnic area. I mentioned in the first few sentences that Heidi and I went to look for nesting birds, namely snowy egrets and possibly great blue herons. We wanted to walk over to an area we had not checked out before. On our way we crossed over the creek by way of a pedestrian bridge. This area is known to have cliff swallows nesting all around the undersides of the bridge. And we enjoyed all the activity by the cliff swallows. They seemed to be quite busy, but we couldn't see them very well once they went under the bridge. As we continued to the other side of the bridge we could see quite a bit of activity on the ground. Swallows were flitting and fluttering all over the muddy ground. I saw one lone killdeer nearby; I wonder if this bird was preparing to build a nest, too.

If you click on the photos you can probably see a larger image. This photo, below, shows some of the flitting and fluttering activity, but I mainly focused in on the swallow in the lower right corner. This one was gathering little bits of grass.

Apparently, we were being entertained while these swallows were hard at work. They were busy making mud balls to take back to their nests they were building under the bridge.

Here is a closer view of these fascinating birds.

We finally made our way over to the eucalyptus grove. And, lo and behold! We actually saw great blue herons nesting! Can you imagine seeing these large birds way up high in the tops of the trees. They sure did look "out of place." There wasn't much activity other than seeing a heron here and there craning their beautiful long necks.

These birds were not necessarily easy to see in our binoculars, and it was even more difficult to get half-way decent photos. They definitely blend into the trees.

This one made me think of a sentry guard, keeping a lookout to make sure no predators invaded his territory. I do believe the females were probably incubating their eggs. I don't think there were any hatchlings yet. (This was back in early-mid May).

And if you can look closely, you will see this bird stretching his wings while his beak is barely visible behind the branch.

On our way back from the eucalyptus grove to the bridge Heidi and I saw this beautiful western bluebird. This is the very first time I have seen a bluebird in this valley. But then I don't have the "right stuff" in my yard to attract bluebirds. Maybe some day I will.

I love how this bird fanned his tail for us. He even let us get a good look at him from all sides.

As we were returning to our car by way of the trail we kept hearing this beautiful song bird, and then finally it made an appearance. I love hearing song sparrows. Getting a decent shot of this bird was a challenge, too. But here are a few shots I thought were decent enough to post.

I caught him in action here while he was singing.

As for nesting snowy egrets, we could only get a distant glimpse of white now and then (with our binoculars) on an island out in the middle of the lake. A nice well protected location for some snowies.

A riparian trail

I've taken a couple extra days off from work and taking advantage of visiting various places around the Silicon Valley Bay Area - in other words, around my neck of the "woods." On Thursday, after running a couple of errands and before I had to run a couple more, my husband and I stopped to visit an area of Los Gatos Creek Trail that I had not walked along before. This particular part of the trail is nestled in by several homes and a busy road. The trail itself goes under the busy road and is set between Los Gatos Creek on one side and backyards of homes on the other. Nevertheless, it is well traveled by others on a daily basis and is close enough to a number of businesses that folks take their walk on this trail for their lunch break.

The photo above and this close-up of some yellow flowers I found by the creek. You can barely see the creek running by in the background on the left in the photo above. I'm curious to find out its identification. Very attractive and interesting plant.
As we walked farther down the trail we came to the overpass where there were several rock pigeons nesting under the overpass. But we also saw one lone swallow's nest. I think it's a cliff swallow. My confusion though was that I thought cliff swallows always nested in colonies, and not by themselves. If you look closely (and you can enlarge the photo by clicking on it), I think you can see the swallow's tail sticking out of the upper left side of the nest.
There were several thistles along the trail, and many were in bloom. Some of them were already finished blooming for the season. But this one looked like it had just bloomed in the past couple days.

Here is a close-up of the blossom. Even though thistles are obnoxious weeds I still find their blossoms very attractive.

On the residential side of the trail were several oleander shrubs like this one. Such pretty flowers. Oleanders are quite prolific here in California; that's one of the plants one can see all over the freeways here in our state. They are quite attractive, especially when in bloom.

This shrub was also in bloom on the residential side of the trail. I can't remember the name of this one. There are some things about this part of Los Gatos Creek Trail that is so different from the percolation pond area that I frequent. The perk ponds area is more like open space and it is very dry along the trail, and the plant life seems to be different. For example, I can find statice growing at the perk ponds, but that plant was lacking here on this part of the trail. Also on this trail it is a lot shadier, which means many more trees clumped together - more woodsy like. On the other hand, at the perk ponds the trees are fewer and farther apart.

On our way out I saw this sloped area with grass growing - not much to speak of, but I saw these smallish California poppies growing amidst the grass and thought that was quite attractive.

A Trip to the NWRs of Northern California

Last Sunday my husband and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. We had planned to visit the National Wildlife Refuges in Northern California, namely, Modoc NWR, Tule Lake NWR, and Lower Klamath NWR. Tule Lake and Lower Klamath are a stone's throw from each other. And Modoc is about 50 miles east of Tule Lake NWR. But before we got started Monday morning we had to make a detour. Our son had gone to the Sierras with his two dogs for the weekend and had truck trouble and had to get it towed in. Luckily, he was only about 6 miles away from a town that had a tow truck. To make a long story short, we headed up to Shaver Lake in case he was going to be "stranded" there overnight and he would need to get back into San Jose before the truck would be fixed. On our way to Shaver Lake, we drove through an area near Millerton Lake where I saw in a distance a very large nest in a big old dead tree out in a field. We think it was possibly an eagle's nest, but we never saw any eagles flying around or perched anywhere in the vicinity. We did see vultures and hawks flying around. The hawks were most likely red-tailed hawks - but I couldn't positively identify any of them. I did see a hawk "diving" down to a field - possibly going after his lunch or dinner -- and this one had red markings, so it was probably a red-tailed hawk. Then while we were "parked" at the towing place waiting with Tim to make sure the truck would be fixed by day's end, Dave noticed some of the birds flying around nearby. He pointed out some birds he thought were possibly swallows. I got my trusty, new binocs and checked it out. Yes, cliff swallows were flying around and heading back to the eaves of one of the buildings of the towing place. Meanwhile, Dave and I knew we weren't going to get to our destination before nightfall, so we opted to stay overnight in Lodi, CA and get a fresh start the next morning. And the only birds we found there around the motel in Lodi were starlings and house sparrows. I didn't get any photos taken on Monday, but here are a few pix I took Saturday morning around our yard.

More posts with more photos of our NWR trip will follow.

Trip to the Palo Alto Baylands

Earlier this week, Adam Paul (see his blog) visited the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve and his post inspired me to visit since it's about a 20-25 minute drive from where I live. I asked my husband if he would like to accompany me. He isn't "into birds" like I am, but he does enjoy the outdoors and walking/hiking. So we took off about 8:30 this morning, getting there about 9 a.m. The first thing we wanted to check out was the rookeries for both snowy egrets and black-crowned night herons. We parked near the Duck Pond to see what was there. We did not know that the egrets' rookery was located there. But that was quite a sight to see. Here is a shot of a small portion of the rookery. The palm trees were full of snowy egrets. I never would have thought that egrets would nest in palm trees!Below is a snowy egret in the duck pond. Check out that beautiful reflection. I wonder if he/she was admiring its beauty. :)

This egret was taking off.
And here is another shot of a snowy egret in the palm tree.Below is a picture of mama and offspring.

While standing there watching, marveling and listening to the snowy egrets I found this black-crowned night heron perched among the egrets. Isn't he handsome?
And here is a close-up shot of him. I would have loved to have seen the herons' rookery, but I didn't realize they were located near the ranger's station which we missed. Oh well, maybe next time.
Across the way, on the other side of the road, there was this American Avocet. Another handsome looking bird. We also saw a couple of black-necked stilts, but I couldn't get a decent picture of any of them.Other birds we saw but I couldn't or didn't get pictures of were: mallards, Canada geese with their goslings, Brewer's blackbirds, red-winged blackbirds, American coots, ring-billed gulls, a pair of mockingbirds, rock pigeons, and a couple of song sparrows. We also saw many cliff swallows in flight, but couldn't get any pictures of them, until we went toward the nature center. As we walked around the deck of the nature center I looked up and saw many nests with nestlings peeking out. Below is a nest with 2 little ones staring out. Aren't they cute? As Dave (my husband) and I walked out on the boardwalk toward the mud flats, about midway there was this raucous sound that came from below. It certainly startled me, and I had no idea what it was. After Dave described it, I realized it was most likely a couple of California clapper rails. Too bad I never saw them; I could have marked it down as a "lifer." Oh well, maybe another day, another time.