The “awwwwwww….” factor is building by the day in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay area, as birders have the chance to watch one of the most fantastic urban egret rookeries in this part of California.
Many thousands of people live and work nearby, but unless you look up while heading down a certain street, you might never know about it.
Each spring, from February or March through late summer, hundreds of birds nest and raise their chicks in sycamore and other tall trees on the Google headquarters campus in Mountain View.
Nesting has just begun, and any eggs produced won’t be hatching until sometime next month. When we went to view last Sunday, April 7, about a dozen birds were in the trees along Shorebird Way. A passer-by told me that, the previous week, there had only been about five birds.
At the peak of the season, Google says more than 100 nests are typically found in the rookery. Right now, all we observed were Great Egrets, but Snowy Egrets and Black-crowned Night Herons also breed along Shorebird Way.
According to a Google blog posting, the rookery “hosts 20 percent of the Great Egret nests that are monitored in the South Bay, according to the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory.”
The company works to protect the birds, with signs posted to explain the rookery to observers.
The Google blog says:
The work starts in spring. Before nesting begins, we stop mowing the lawn underneath the sycamore trees. Signs are posted alerting nearby Googlers and other visitors to the area of upcoming road closures. In addition to suspending shuttle and car traffic from May to September, we ensure food trucks aren’t in the area, as they can attract predators that might go after fledglings. And we have notices and processes in place to ensure that if a chick falls, they can be properly transferred to a rescue organization. Meanwhile, for us humans, we’ve even ensured that there’s no sidewalk on the side of the street where the birds are nesting to prevent accidental whitewashing.
Even without the signs, the rookery would be hard to miss: Egrets are noisy, and the whitewash is no joke. But on a summer afternoon when the roads are closed, the area can feel like a little bird refuge in the middle of campus. Volunteers from the Audubon Society host “office hours” to teach interested colleagues about the egrets, and groups of seniors and students can occasionally be found on site. The rookery has even earned a spot on Google Maps.
This is not the only location on the Google campus that has excellent birding. Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society has a Bird Google page that details some of their work with the company to provide safe nesting and good birding.
The Google campus is open, and visitors are welcome to walk through and view the birds. Keep in mind, however, that this is a worksite, so I would not recommend parking in a Google lot during the middle of the workday. If you visit, I suggest doing so on weekends or after work.
The street directly under the rookery may be blocked from traffic once the chicks have hatched, but you should be able to find appropriate parking nearby.
The rookery is quite easy to find. If you drive to Mountain View from either north or south on Highway 101, exit at Shoreline Blvd. and then go north on Shoreline. Continue several blocks and Shorebird will be on your right. Turn right and go toward the end of Shorebird where it makes a turn to the left. Find a place to park, and look up!
Birdathon Fundraiser
As many of you will recall, every year my wife and I do a Birdathon fundraiser for SCVAS.
We have greatly appreciated your kind donations over the past years, and we hope that you will be able to continue your most-generous donations again.
In the last few years we have managed to raise about $2,000 each year. As of this writing we are about halfway to that level, so won’t you please step up and help us reach our goal again? We can’t do it without you!
Our 2019 Birdathon will be 5 hours of birding on Saturday, April 20, through the woods and creekside near the SCVAS office in Cupertino.
Won't you please donate to help us out?
This will be our 16th year as members of an SCVAS Birdathon team. We will be on a team led by veteran Auduboner Lisa Myers, and we'll be walking in the fields and woods, counting bird species we see, talking and learning as we watch the birds in this beautiful location.
Our aim is to find more species than all the other teams! There is a good chance that we may even win a great prize for raising money, thanks to you.
And the money raised goes to a great cause: It's for the kids.
The SCVAS education programs reach hundreds of youngsters in Santa Clara County each year. Trained volunteers conduct hands-on, in-class activities and presentations to schoolchildren, teaching them about birds, wildlife, and the environment. Some of these presentations include live bird visits to classrooms! Volunteers also lead school field trips, taking many children into nearby natural areas each year to identify birds and learn about ecosystems.
Some of these city dwelling or immigrant kids have never been camping, hiking, or elsewhere out in nature. These field trips could be a child's first experience enjoying nature and learning about birds! Won't you help support SCVAS education and conservation programs by making a donation? We greatly appreciate any amount, no matter how small.
Two Ways to Pledge
Snail-mail us a check. Please make it out to Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society, or SCVAS. In the memo line of your check, please write my wife’s name, Carolyn Straub. If you wish to do that, please contact me through Kosmail and I’ll get back to you with our mailing address.
OR …….
You may pledge online. Click this link to donate.
IMPORTANT NOTE
After you click on the Donate link above you may get a dialog box asking you to log in or create a user account and log in to the website. You do NOT have to do that! If that dialog box appears and you do not wish to create a user account, simply close out of it by clicking the “X” in the upper right of that box.
After the box closes, scroll down the web page to fill out the appropriate information. All you need to fill out are those items with asterisks, such as name, address, email, etc. Again, you do not need to create a login name or account. If you use the pulldown that says “Keep Anonymous,” then of course we will appreciate your donation but will not be able to thank you for it.
Of course those who give their names when donating will receive a detailed report of the event, including birds seen, following the Birdathon.
CREDIT TO CAROLYN!
On the Donation page, fill in the donation amount, and under that is a dialog box that says: “Credit this donation to a Fundraiser:” Please use the pull-down arrow in that box to select Carolyn Straub’s name so that she gets credit for your donation. We are competing with other teams to raise the most money, so don’t forget to include Carolyn’s name or else we won’t be able to track your donations!
Your pledge must be received by us before Wednesday, May 15.
As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, all donations to SCVAS are fully tax deductible.
If you have donated in the past, we thank you for donating again. If this is your first time, then we thank you for joining in the fun and helping out this very worthy cause!
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you....!