[EBB Sightings] Friday's field trip to Jewel Lake

Dear Birders,

Yesterday was the final GGAS Friday Jewel Lake for the season.  We plan
on regrouping in early September when with luck we'll see some of the
migrants traveling through the East Bay.

Yesterday was the morning for thrushes -- Swainson's Thrush singing all
around us.  A month ago, they had been mostly silent letting us know of
their presence only by call notes.

What a difference a month makes.  In early May, the dominate singers
had been the Wilson's Warbler and the Orange-crowned Warbler.  Now we
heard only a song or two and not until the end of the walk did were
hear Black-headed Grosbeaks.

It was a lovely mild early summer morning with none of the usual canyon
chill.  All the deciduous trees and shrubs that grow along the stream
and around the lake are fully-leafed out into heavy bowers of
vegetation.  The lake, itself a leaf green, no longer spills over the
dam -- its still surface disturbed only by ripples made by a pond
turtle as it slid off a log into the water.
 
The day before one of naturalists jogging along the roadway where
Tilden Park becomes Wildcat Canyon Park, had a second recent (or is it
'third?') sighting of a mountain lion.     

Phila Rogers