[SBB] Calero-Morgan Hill CBC - 12/30/06

[[[email protected]] (Mike Rogers)]

All,

Yesterday 12/30/06, I birded the northeastern part of the Calero-Morgan Hill Christmas Bird Count circle (San Felipe Road, San Felipe Valley, San Felipe Creek, and Las Animas Road).

Howard Higley and I started out owling at 4:30am and had great success. Working our way up Metcalf Road and then walking down Las Animas Road, we found 1 BARN OWL, 13+ WESTERN SCREECH-OWLS, 5 GREAT HORNED OWLS (including a courting pair), a NORTHERN PYGMY-OWL (started calling at 6:40am) and, very surprising for the Diablo Range, a NORTHERN SAW-WHET OWL. The saw-whet started calling at 6:09am and kept up its monotonous tooting for a couple of minutes, but not long enough for us to chase it down for a look (about a quarter-mile down Las Animas Road). While heading back to the car at dawn and driving back to Parkway Lakes to drop off Howard, we saw many VARIED THRUSHES - they were flushing from the road edge all the way back. This was a sign of what was to come later in the day!

The most abundant bird in my area was indeed the VARIED THRUSH! I counted 551 in my area and 32 more in Jack Cole's adjacent area while driving back to Parkway Lakes. This count was made by ones (no estimating  involved) as the birds were spread out along my entire route with the largest groups containing only 8 or 10 birds. This total was perhaps bolstered by the extensive coverage of shaded bay laurel portions of San Felipe Creek (about 3.5 miles), but the birds were common along road edges in just about any treed habitat, including eucalpytus groves! Last year I was happy to find 11 VARIED THRUSHES in the same region, and often there are none in this Diablo Range area. For comparison, the next most abundant species (including all species with 50 or more individuals) I saw were:

AMERICAN CROW - 145
BAND-TAILED PIGEON - 125
DARK-EYED (OREGON) JUNCO - 119
EUROPEAN STARLING - 118
WILD TURKEY - 105
WESTERN SCRUB-JAY - 86
STELLER'S JAY - 72
GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROW - 65
CALIFORNIA TOWHEE - 56
AMERICAN ROBIN - 55 (only 10% of the VATH total!)
CHESTNUT-BACKED CHICKADEE - 54
MOURNING DOVE - 53

WILD TURKEY numbers are up, as are RED-SHOULDERED HAWKS - I counted 7 of the latter this year, a testament to the continued expansion into Diablo Range areas.

Highlights of my 9+ mile loop hike from the old Highland School included 15+ WOOD DUCKS (in San Felipe Creek), 2 adult COOPER'S HAWKS, 2 dark morph adult FERRUGINOUS HAWKS (one at the southeast corner of San Felipe Valley like last year and the other 2.2 miles to the southeast along the ridgetop east of Las Animas Road, at the only two places were I had WESTERN MEADOWLARKS!), 1 adult GOLDEN EAGLE (east of Las Animas Road), 1 WILSON'S SNIPE (San Felipe Valley), 1 mostly "YELLOW-SHAFTED" NORTHERN  FLICKER (San Felipe Valley, perfect except for no nuchal collar and excessive gray in the throat), 7 BROWN CREEPERS (San Felipe Creek drainage, this species is often nearly missed on this count), 3 TOWNSEND'S WARBLERS (San Felipe Creek drainage), 22 PURPLE FINCHES, and a hatching-year WHITE-THROATED SPARROW (with a small group of GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROWS between mileposts 0048 and 0057 on Las Animas Road). Three BOBCATS were also neat.

A stock pond near the count circle boundary at the southeast corner of San Felipe Valley held a surprising 22 AMERICAN WIGEON, 18 GADWALL, 2 MALLARDS, 2 RING-NECKED DUCKS, 3 BUFFLEHEAD, 2 COMMON GOLDENEYES, and a BLACK-NECKED STILT, the stilt being perhaps the most surprising for the Diablo Range.

Birding my way down San Felipe Road to Heartland Way later in the day turned up a light morph FERRUGINOUS HAWK, an adult PEREGRINE FALCON eating atop a high tension tower, and a RUFOUS-CROWNED SPARROW (uncommon here).

Mike Rogers
Sunnyvale

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