[EBB Sightings] Eared Grebes at Lake Elizabeth in Fremont

Around noon yesterday, on a cool, hazy day, I spent an hour in the wind at Lake Elizabeth in Fremont (Paseo Padre at Stevenson), birding just the north end of the lake beyond the boat house and then east along the lake as far as New Marsh.
   
  Two EARED GREBES were among a flock of northern shovelers, with just a few of the eclipse shoveler males finally molting into their colorful plumage, and ruddy ducks, a few with bright white face patches, in the bay on the northwest side (closest to the Animal Shelter). A single "aechmophorous" grebe, probably western, was in the glare of the sun-dappled chop in the middle of the northeast bay (closest to the railroad tracks).  
   
  The female kestrel was hunting at the golf course just over the railroad tracks. A pied-billed grebe had a huge crawfish, glowing red in the sunshine, in its bill, and the bird dived over and over again with it and jabbed at it with its bill, but the crawfish put up a good fight...until the grebe finally just swallowed it (apparently still fighting). I saw white-crowned sparrows a couple of places. I combed the shoreline and New Marsh (which had a lot more water in it than the last time I was here, and no mudflats), but I did not re-find the spotted sandpiper that I'd seen on September 18.
   
  All in all, twenty-one species sighted in about an hour on a very windy day, mostly the usual suspects with a dash of the above.
   
  Stephanie Floyd
  Fremont

       
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