[EBB Sightings] Little Blue Heron at Quarry Lakes in Fremont/Niles

Hi folks,

I had a good visit this afternoon to an old haunt, Quarry Lakes.  It is a
very birdy place, with robust breeding populations of many birds.  I saw
many good birds, but the highlight for me is a lifer, a Little Blue Heron.
My first pass through my pictures of this guy are posted at:

http://leahy.to/birds/little%20blue%20heron.html

The Little Blue Heron was camped out on the south shore of Alameda Creek
just a bit upstream (to the east, towards Niles Canyon) from Niles
Community Park at 3rd St. & H St., Fremont, CA.  At L street or so, I'd
say.  Pictures were taken at about 3:45pm.

This Little Blue was keeping to itself, even though there were dozens and
dozens of snowy egrets and many great egrets a few hundred yards
downstream.  I enjoyed watching it forage, as its style was different from
the egrets.

Also seen:  a pair of Spotted Sandpipers, right in the vicinity of the
Little Blue Heron, actively feeding on the south shore.  A Green Heron
gave me very nice views from the levee top on the rocky north shore of the
creek.  Downy and Nuttall's Woodpeckers, Forster's Terns and one Caspian
Tern.  American Pelicans.  A flock of a dozen or so Common Mergansers is
on the creek.  Many, many Black Phoebes, including families units, with
fledged but begging juvies attended to by their harried parents.  The
Lakes (formerly quarries) contained a host of Mallards, but also Gadwalls,
Coots, a few Pied-billed Grebes, and a couple of Double-crested
Cormorants.  There is a lot of brushy area around the lakes filled with a
mix of Bushtits, Chickadees, Titmice and friends.  At 3pm there was an
amazing stream of gulls flying north, just west of the BART tracks, into
the larger lakes like Lago Los Osos, presumably to camp for the night --
perhaps 30-60 gulls a minute, continuously.

I should have updates in my bird album for some of the other birds later
this evening; I may tweak up the Little Blue Heron after further review
as well.

There are also a large number of enormous fish visible in the creek.
Anyone know what they are?  They were around a meter in length.

				David Leahy