American Redstart
Fri, 8 Sep 2000 11:41:33 PDT
From: Steve Glover
Hello everyone,
This morning I birded at Jewel Lake in Tilden Regional Park for a couple of hours. There was a fair number of migrants to look through, the reward being an American Redstart on the west side of Jewel Lake. Other birds included the following:
Pacific-slope Flycatcher - 6
Red-breasted Nuthatch - 4+
Winter Wren - 6
Wilson's Warbler - 7
Yellow Warbler - 7
Western Tanager - 4
Warbling Vireo - 11
Swainson's Thrush - 3
Black-throated Gray Warbler - 2
Townsend's Warbler - 7
Fox Sparrow - 1
Lincoln's Sparrow - 1
Good luck
Steve Glover
Pink pelicans
Mon, 11 Sep 2000 21:43:50 -0700
From: Jimm Edgar
I am not making this up and I was sober. At 4 PM today, Monday 11 September, I came east across the San Mateo bridge and in the salt ponds just south of the hiway were about 6 American White Pelicans, but they were a bright pink!! Not sure what to make of this.
Jimm Edgar
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Re: Pink pelicans
Mon, 11 Sep 2000 22:00:27 -0700
From: Cynthia Hamilton
Another good reason not to mix the whites with the colors in the washer.
Cynthia Hamilton
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Re: Pink pelicans
Mon, 11 Sep 2000 22:30:38 -0700
From: Martha Lowe
When I was a kid the salt ponds used to look pink because they were full of brine shrimp. If this is still the case, perhaps it was a trick of the light and the color was being reflected onto the pelicans. Are you sure you weren't viewing the world through rose colored glasses today?
Martha
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Subject: Re: Pink pelicans
Mon, 11 Sep 2000 22:40:54 -0700
From: Rusty Scalf
There are halophytic (salt-loving) bacteria that inhabit the brine pools in the south bay and these bacteria are red. Sometimes when you land at Oakland Airport in summer and look out the plane window, you can see pools that are quite red or pink. Possibly these birds were on red-tinted water and that tint reflected in their plumage.
That's my best guess.
Rusty Scalf
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Re: Pink pelicans
12 Sep 2000 10:53:19 -0700
From: Les Chibana
A few years ago I saw 3 flamingos on a salt pond (A18?) in the Alviso area. And I've heard of some being seen in one of the marsh systems in the north East Bay. It's a novel thought, but I favor the red bacteria possibility. And I don't really think that anyone would mistake a flamingo for a pelican.
Les Chibana
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Re: Pink pelicans
Tue, 12 Sep 2000 21:57:48 -0700
From: Larry Tunstall
Well, I'll toss out a couple of other possibilities, though I have no evidence for either.
First, it is not terribly unusual to see light-colored water birds that are stained pink from ferric oxides in water or muds. Thus, it seems at least possible that the pelican feathers might have been stained by pink saltpond bacteria.
Second, I believe I recall that flamingos get their pink coloration from pigments in the food they eat. Perhaps a white pelican swallowing a lot of the reddish bacteria would actually incorporate some pigment into its feathers? That seems much less likely, however, than the other two possibilities.
Good birding, Larry
Larry Tunstall
El Cerrito CA
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Coyote Hills on Saturday
Wed, 13 Sep 2000 16:15:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: Vijay Ramachandran
Hi. A late post...
A Saturday morning bike ride on the Alameda Creek Regional Trail on the northern boundary of Coyote Hills Regional Park didn't produced the many hoped-for migrants - but I did see a Western Tanager in freshly moulted plumage. There were maybe a thousand+ Willets, and many Western Sandpipers, Least Sandpipers, and Marbled Godwits in a pond at the edge of the bay. The same day, I had a Pacific-slope Flycatcher in the trees in my apartment complex (in Ardenwood).
A query - what are some good spots to find migrants in Fremont?
Good birding,
Vijay
Warblers in Tilden Regional Park
Thu, 14 Sep 2000 19:00:37 -0700
From: Larry Tunstall
On Alan Kaplan's East Bay Regional Park District birdwalk this morning in Tilden Regional Park (Berkeley Hills), we found a Black-throated Gray Warbler and Townsend Warblers on Upper Packrat Trail, and a first-year Yellow Warbler near the bench on the east side of Jewel Lake. We also saw Fox Sparrow, Warbling Vireo, and Orange-crowned Warbler, and heard Nuttall's Woodpecker, lots of Wrentits, Spotted Towhees, Bewick's Wren, and Red-breasted Nuthatch.
Good birding, Larry
Larry Tunstall
El Cerrito CA