HawkWatch Day 2 -- Sat, Aug 27

Great fun. 165 raptors were recorded of 8 species: red-tails, turkey vultures, Cooper's hawks, sharp-shinned hawk, American kestrels, an osprey, a red-shouldered hawk and a prairie falcon. I didn't see the prearie falcon. It had been caught by the banders and released and was briefly glimpsed by the watchers as it was released. The banders confirmed that it had been a prairie falcon though.

I looked through some of the others' binoculars and after a day on the Hill have decided to go with 10x of some sort. I'll probably get the Celestron Noble 10x42 binoculars, but I'm hoping to give them a look at Scope City. Since I'll never buy anything from and probably will not ever return to Discount Camera due to their terrible attitudes and lack of customer service, the only other place is Scope City, at least in San Francsico. If I like the binos and can't talk them down to the same price as Eagle Optics I'll get them from Eagle Optics. That 30-day return policy is pretty nice and everyone seems to love the company.

I hope the image quality of the 10x42 Celestrons match that of the 8x42's, since they are so highly regarded. According to Celestron's website the 10x42's are "new", so the judgement is not out on them yet. Anything will be better than my $50 Bushnells, but I don't want anything. I want the absolute best thing available for under $300.

Once I have a good set of binoculars I need never waste time talking about them and can focus instead on the birds--which will look awesome through my new binoculars!

Brown Creeper

That didn't take long. I'm fairly sure what I saw spiraling up the tree in the Presidio was a Brown Creeper. I guess I just needed a little alone time with the field guide to find it.

Hmm. The Nat. Geo. Field Guide is not calling the parrots by the name conure, though Mark Bittner, author of the Parrots of Telegraph Hill made an issue of pointing out that they were technically conures, even though he continued to call them parrots.

A Day in the Presidio

On an editorial retreat at the Presidio in San Francisco I spied through the window a red-tailed hawk chasing another brownish bird about 40 feet off the ground. The other bird could have been another red-tail but I did not see either very long. The hawk I did see so quickly was brown, had a red tail and was about the size it should be. It was a very fast glimpse.

I also caught short looks at the flock of conures the live in the Presidio. There is some debate as to whether it is the same flock as represented in the movie and book, The Parrots of Telegraph Hill, or if the flocks merge and morph from time to time. The parrots have been sighted regularly in the Presidio, on Telegraph Hill, and in Dolores Park.

I got the former Army base about an hour early and had a nice morninng hike through a stand of Eucalyptus trees while walking along a trail called Lovers' Lane. I didn't see anything along the path, but when it opened up near a field recently planted with conifers and with a mostly sandy/grassy ground I spotted a bird I have yet to ID. It was small (6-8"?) had a downward curved 1" bill and it was running up and down the trunk of one of the trees, hopped to another tree and continued its up and down journey. I recently read about such behavior but have not found the page again in the field guide. It also had a pale chest and belly with slight rufous flash under the tail. I think if I see it in a book I'll be able give it a name.

Lake Merced on a Monday walk

Lake Merced in San Francisco has a few things to offer. But one is not a walk around one of the lakes. Harding Park Golf Course is nestled between the two lakes and pedestrian traffic is forbidden on the golf course. But despite this frustration, I managed to see a few birds that got me happy.

A juvenile red-shouldered hawk caught my attention flying down one of the fairways. It took me a while to make the ID. The bright white crescents on the dorsal side of the wings near the tips matched up nicely to the National Geographic field guide. Maybe due to the intense fog the bird looked more grey than brown and I could hardly see any banding on the tail feathers. I'm fairly sure it was not a red-tail, it wasn't stocky enough, the flight style didn't seem quite right, and those white crescents were the most visible thing on the bird as it flew away from me. I managed to find where it landed and we checked each other out. When it took off again the only other thing I noticed was that the tail seemed slightly longer than a red-tail's would, but nowhere near as long as an accipiter's. And it didn't look anything like an accip.

Heading to the lake side, we came upon an active and loud belted kingfisher, with two bright orange bars on the belly alternating with white, and darker brown and white bars/stripes up the chest with a thick white ring around its neck. I followed it to three successive perches but kept scaring it off as I approached. The only odd thing about this bird was that it seemd to be substantially bigger than the numerous kingfishers I saw from my former office window overlooking the lagoon in San Rafael. Maybe those were just farther away, or maybe there is size difference between sexes. According to Sibley though, there is not. Oh well, size is the most commonly mistaken feature of a bird.

In addition to a slew of gulls and cormorants we saw a few grebes, in particular one grebe with 2 or 3 little fuzzy babies squeaking non-stop a hundred feet or so offshore. I don't know what kind they were. I seem to recall their heads being more roundish than ovalish, so they may have been eared grebes. They were fairly gray and drab overall.

I'm finding it ironic that all the buteos I've seen lately in the city have been red-shouldered Hawks when it seems that until recently I thought everything was a red-tail. I wonder if I was previously mistaken and am just more thorough at making IDs now, or if I'm just seeing more birds locally and finding more diversity than I ever thought existed so close to my city home. Either way, I like it.

More birds, but in the City!

I surely did not expect to see any more cool birds this weekend. But, I did. On the way to Fort Funston I saw a Red-shouldered Hawk on a light post on Rt. 1 between the entrance to Lake Merced and Fort Funston. It was quick, but sure enough, when we left it was still there and most definitely an adult Red-shouldered.

Inside the park I had a great day too. Literally the first tree we came to after leaving the parking lot held a Cooper's Hawk on a top-level brach. We looked for a little while with me handing off my binoculars to my wife. I grabbed them back in time to see a raven approach and the the Coop take off, fly behind us, and make a cool twist before diving down below sight in the direction of Lake Merced. The long tail and relatively large size convinced me she was a female Coop.

On our walk we continued to see cool stuff. In addition to all the neat puppies and doggies, we saw a very satisfied Osprey carrying its dinner from the surf to a perch somewhere in San Francisco. There were quite a few gulls chasing him but he won out and soared inland.

But the coup de gras was seen from the wooden deck next to the hang glider runway. From there I spotted half a dozen porpoises swimming northward along the beach. The 6 to 8 dolphins arched their backs through the surf and occasionally jumped clear of the water, turning a few degrees and crashing back-first into the sea. We watched them for twenty minutes or so and pointed them out to the rest of the people on the deck. I won't comment on the woman who answered dully, "Yeah," to my question, "Did you see the dolphins?" I guess her bitterness was compounded by her expression.

As the guy sitting next to us at Howard's Cafe said, "This has been a good Sunday."

Swainson's Hawks galore

So we had our field trip. It was pretty damn cool. We saw a ton of Swainson's Hawks. We were, after all, searching for Swainson's Hawks in Central Valley, California, and sure enough we found them. Ironically, if you're a birder, the 10% population of dark morphs and non-typical Sainson's seem to be located in California. Out of the hundreds of hawks we saw, only two or three were the typical Swainson's with light underremiges and brown caps. The rest were a mottled mess. There were many juvenile Swainson's and many variously morphed adults.

In addition to the Swainson's Hawks we saw several skeins of White-faced Ibis's, a Green Heron, Northern Harriers, Red-tailed Hawks, American Kestrels, Great and Snowy Egrets, Great Blue Herons, and a skyful of Long-billed Curlews (many thousands). We also saw a couple of White-tailed Kites off in the distance near a high-school field towards the end of the day.

For me, we ran across a few species that were life birds, not so much that I had never seen them before , but that I had no reason to identify them before. They were the Western Kingbird, Loggerhead Shrike, Cattle Egret, Western Meadowlark, and a Yellow-billed Magpie. The Ibis's were also life birds.

I doubt I should count count them in my life list, but we found two Burrowing Owl corpses on the side of the road as we were leaving our last stop. We figured they were either burrowing too close to the road and got hit by a car. I don't know anything about these owls behavior, but I find it odd that two were killed. I wonder if they were hit at the same time. I suppose now I'll have to go to the Berkelely Marina to see a few live owls digging into the lawn.

But all in all, after 8 hours of sitting in a moving car, it was a great trip. I look forward to next year's, and I hope Erin comes along.

Audubon MasterVision DVD set

Yesterday evening I watched a great deal of the two-DVD set of 505 Birds of North America, from Mastervision. While the title has Audubon in the title, I think it may have been licensed a long long time ago. Though it was packed with useful information, it may have been the worst produced DVD I've seen in a while. And the information was quite a bit dated. True, I've only been birding for a couple of years, but I've yet hear anyone refer to a morph as a phase in person.

My cat loved it though. She followed the tweety birds back and forth across the screen and sometimes stared off to one side trying to find where the birds went. She even went into the kitchen and looked around thoroughly for the little bird that flew off the edge of the TV.

I enjoyed the DVD too. But if you're selling something for $70 and advertising it in every serious bird magazine, then put a little effort into making it look good. Fortunately I got it for free from the magazine I work for. It was sent in to be reviewed. I guess this is the review they got -- probably not what they intended.

I watched it intently for about an hour, then had it on in the background to listen to the relaxing calls and look up when something sounded interesting. I definitely like having it around for reference, but I really can't imagine having paid for it. I would have been terribly disappointed to get this product in the mail for my hard-earned bucks. As it was, I got it for free and was mildly disappointed.

First Hawkwatch -- Aug 13, 2005

My first Hawkwatch as a volunteer with the GGRO (Golden Gate Raptor Observatory) was quite eventful for me despite Hawk Hill being entirely fogged in. Given our options due to the fog I subtley pressed for us hiking up Bobcat Trail to see if we could find the known nesting Great Horned Owls there. Sure enough we found one asleep in a Eucalyptus tree -- my first ever Great Horned Owl and only the second owl I've seen in the wild.

The other life birds for me on that day were rather common birds, but since my bird knowledge extends only to raptors right now -- and that fairly limited -- I needed the others in the group's expertise to tell me what I was seeing so as to fill out the everyday birds in my life list.

But even with that I think I discovered that one of the birds they ID'd was wrong. A group of three flycatchers was identified as olive-sided, but looking at my guide book at home I am fairly certain they were Ash-Throated Flycatchers. The ruddy tail tells me they were not olive-sided.

I also saw a Wilson's Warbler, Lesser Goldfinch, Song Sparrow, and a Heerman's Gull. But the most impressive addition was that of a Marsh Wren. A very recognizable song, but "You'll never see him, so don't even bother looking," they said. That just forced me to scan even harder through my binos. This was my first day after all. I've got to show them how stubborn I can be. Lo and behold I saw some of the reeds shaking in the exact spot the song was coming from. And then I saw him, sitting on a reed obscured by several other reeds. But while I was trying to describe his location to the others, he jumped up to about 3/4's way up a reed and clung there out in the open for a good 45 seconds before disappearing back into the marsh. Fortunately, everyone got a look.

We also spent some time trying to ID another warbler. They hadn't seen this little yellow guy before and we did not get too many good looks at it. But based on the type of dark grey/black cap, I think it may have beed a Tennessee Warbler which would be rare but not impossible for the California coast. It may not have been that though.

All in all I'm thrilled to be a part of the GGRO and their mission. Check them out: http://www.ggro.org/

Saturday, we field trip to the valley to see a few hundred Swainson's Hawks before they begin their trek to Argentina to feast on beetles. I'll keep you posted.