Yikes.
I spent Saturday outdoors, helping take down our banding blinds, then off for a few hours of birding. Came home, got dinner, downloaded pix and came here to write this diary... and there was all the news about Rep. Giffords.
This all seems a bit fluffy now.
But maybe we need something lighter this morning. Not sure if this will do the trick, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, .
If you look a little closer at the left side of the bridge above, you'll notice someone perched on the railing. We didn't want to disturb the hawk, so we moved slowly and figured we'd wait until someone else flushed her - we could see a few people on the path toward the bridge.
This guy got onto the bridge and noticed the hawk - who wasn't bothered when he stopped just about 15 feet away. Since the hawk didn't seem to mind, we inched a little closer, and a little closer still. We could hear that the guy was talking to the hawk... "You're not nervous, right? You don't mind us being here?" The hawk stood there, rather unperturbed. More walkers approached from the other side. We inched a little closer. The guy just stood there talking to the hawk. At last, it was all just a little too much, a little too close, and it flew away.
He knew the bird from his walks there around Martinez Regional Shoreline, and said hello to it when they crossed paths. It gave us a smile. He told us about the other redtails in the park, and how one scared up all the night herons by flying into their roost tree. We saw no night herons, but we did see this cousin:
But that wasn't what drew us to the park - it was yet another cousin. A week and a half ago, someone had spotted a Least Bittern in the marsh beside a trail. It was still being reported yesterday, and a handful of us made a trip out to see it after doing our morning's work.
The bird was most cooperative. She was foraging at the edge of the reeds just ten feet or so from the trail. Still, even though we knew where to look, it would have been easy enough to overlook. Tiny bird, blends in well... they're meant to disappear. With 4-5 people already watching when we got there, though - not so tough. We stayed for about half an hour as the bird put on a great show, nailing several fish as we watched, even diving under once. And of course, there's the cuteness factor that just can't be denied.
The reeds closest to me caused all the bright stuff at the edge. I could have cropped it out to get to the nice, focussed shot of the bittern, but it actually makes kind of a cool vignette affect, doesn't it?
We headed back toward San Francisco. If the weather had been nicer, we would have made a dash for the coast and got in a little time at Pt. Reyes or Bolinas Lagoon in the last few hours of light, but the grey (and cold) was not not a good motivator. I dropped my friend off, and took the roundabout way home from her place, going past Lake Merced (my Christmas Count area).
There was an Eared Grebe who was also making use of these last moments of daylight to get in a few more dives. On the power lines above the parking lot, it looked like there was a lone pigeon, but a closer look revealed that the "pigeon" was actually a Mew Gull. (During the count, we knew to check the wires around the lake for Mew Gulls - they really like the wires, and I guess their feet are tiny enough so that it works out.)
There were a few other "pigeons" who weren't pigeons. Alas, they were The Bird Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken, aka Eurasian Collared Dove Satan's Dove.
At this time last year, I said that I'd really hoped to get to 500 North American Birds in 2010 - I already had 490+. I didn't make it (couldn't travel much, as it turned out), but the Least Bittern brought me one closer to the goal. The total would be one higher if I'd count Satan's Dove, but I just won't - sometimes you just have to stand on principle.