[SBB] Sunnyvale water control plant...

["Chuq Von Rospach" <[[email protected]]>]

I have some code to write in the next couple of days for work, so I did what I usually do when I'm designing and get the heck out of the office and away from distractions for a while. I'd planned on visiting the herons, but traffic was ugly on the 101, so I went to the SWCP instead -- haven't been there for a while.

Overall, a nice walk (heading to really warm), but nothing too  special. Pretty quiet. In the area around the plant itself there were house sparrows and house finches mostly. In the marshes of the channel next to the plant were a number of marsh wrens (three seen, one with nest) and song sparrows (mostly by sound, but a few popped up for ID. There were about half a dozen crows out looking for trouble to cause -- they ended up deciding to go harrass a red tail hawk that was sitting on a power pole to the north of the path. The hawk decided to studiously ignore them. At one point, there were three crows within a yard or so of the hawk, and one more diving at it, and the hawk had it's back turned on all of them and paid no attention. The crows finally got bored and went elsewhere -- when I left, the hawk was still on the pole. 

The rushes on the way towards radar dish were primarily populated with marsh wrens and song sparrows. Some patience gave me fleeting looks at two common yellowthroats, and a third that cooperated enough for a picture, but I haven't looked at it yet. Behind the radar dish I had a flock of ~200 blackbirds fly through. none of them had epaulets, so I'm assuming it was mostly youngsters, but it was far out.

Out at the distribution area near the radar dish, the ponds had a few generic gulls, mallards, and a group of ~75 ruddy ducks. A blackbird with two youngsters exhibtiing "feed me" behaviors were on one of the lightpoles, and I saw the red epaulets of some red-winged males in the rushes there.

One hawk stooped the pigeons, but did so seemingly out of habit, since it didn't seem too motivated. It wasn't a red-tail or a harrier, but I have to look at the photos to ID further. Maybe a coopers? Not sure yet.

On the way, back, I had one great egret fishing, one snowy egret flying by, three black-crowned night-herons (one adult male, one adult female, one small youngster), all well separated from each other. One pied-billed grebe, a couple of DC corrmorants, and the great blue heron staring at me and wishing I'd go away... 

Highlight of the trip, other than a really great walk (I don't walk enough, I have to fix that) was at the pumping station back by the plant near the power lines; on the way back, it contained three green herons, who flushed and flew away as I approached. That and the jack rabbit that was in a hurry and more or less ran between my legs to leave the area -- about 15 seconds later, the lady with the husky came into view (on a leash, FWIW...)


Good exercise, decent birding... can't complain... And the coding is now going well... 


-- 
Chuq Von Rospach
(
[[email protected]]; http://chuqui.typepad.com)
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