Tilden Regional Park, plus RFI for a new
project
Fri, 23 Nov 2001 12:22:22 -0800
From: Jennifer Rycenga
Dear East Bay Birders:
First a quick note on some birds seen this morning in Tilden Regional Park (Berkeley Hills). Nothing unusual, but the Lower Packrat Trail was crawling with winter birds: Varied Thrush, Hermit Thrush (at least 5), Fox Sparrow (everywhere), among others. No Hooded Merganser at Jewel Lake, though.
I have recently moved to Berkeley, after living most of my birding-intense years in San Francisco. In considering how I could come to know the East Bay as well as possible, I came up with an idea when looking at a map of the East Bay Regional Parks district. While a number of the parks (Tilden, Coyote Hills and Hayward Regional Shoreline) are places I know very well and return to often, many of the other parks are merely names to me, especially in the north and eastern parts of the region. So I thought I would establish, as a personal goal, visiting and birding each and every one of the East Bay Regional Parks, at least once, during 2002. There are 59 parks in the district, and with 52 weeks in a year, this seems quite achievable.
I am writing to EBB for three reasons:
1) to invite anyone who is interested to participate in the project;
2) related to that, I will announce upcoming trips (when time permits), and share unusual findings with this EBB list.
3) I would like to ask for the combined birding wisdom of this list about optimal times to go to those parks I am unfamiliar with. I know most parks are good during migration, but there are some where migration times might be the only noteworthy birding windows (such as near Mt Diablo), compared to places where birding is always a pleasure (like Tilden and Coyote Hills). I like high species counts, but with this project, I also want to construct as varied and as extensive of a species list for the whole year as possible.
Parks about which I am particularly ignorant include:
Sunol
Sobrante
Ohlone Wilderness
Diablo Foothills
Lafayette-Moraga Regional Trail
Black Diamond Mines and Contra Loma
I'm putting this out with almost 40 days to go to the New Year, because if there are ideas people have about this, or considerations on how I could make the project more useful to the EBBirding community, I'm happy to think about it. My disclaimers include that I travel a great deal, and have a busy job, so this will not be a routine, predictably scheduled sort of activity. I'm an intermediate birder, not a world-class birder who can identify every bird flawlessly. I often have Tuesday and Thursday morning available; one reason I am launching this project is to be able to go birding in the morning but be back in Berkeley for work by the afternoon.
Any thoughts, suggestions, participation, and advice welcome.
Jennifer Rycenga
Berkeley
Point Pinole Regional Shoreline
Sun, 25 Nov 2001 17:36:12 -0800 (PST)
From: David Armstrong
We had 55 species on a 4-hour tour of Point Pinole Regional Shoreline in Richmond today. The highlight was a Brant near the Fishing Pier. We nearly went the whole day without seeing a single raptor until finding two White-tailed Kites in a eucalyptus on the way out. Complete species list is below if you are interested.
David Armstrong
American Coot
American Robin
American Wigeon
Anna's Hummingbird
Bewick's Wren
Black-bellied Plover
Black Phoebe
Black Turnstone
Brant
Bufflehead
Bushtit
California Gull
California Towhee
Clark's Grebe
Common Goldeneye
Common Loon
Common Raven
Dark-eyed Junco
Double-crested Cormorant
Downy Woodpecker
Dunlin
Eared Grebe
Forster's Tern
Golden-crowned Sparrow
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Greater Scaup
Hermit Thrush
House Finch
Killdeer
Lesser Scaup
Lincoln's Sparrow
Mallard
Marbled Godwit
Mourning Dove
Northern Flicker
Northern Mockingbird
Nuttall's Woodpecker
Ring-billed Gull
Rock Dove
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
Ruddy Duck
Say's Phoebe
Semipalmated Plover
Snowy Egret
Song Sparrow
Spotted Sandpiper
Surf Scoter
Western Grebe
Western Gull
Western Meadowlark
White-crowned Sparrow
White-tailed Kite
Willet
Yellow-rumped Warbler
RFI: Cattle Egret at Lake Merritt
Sun, 25 Nov 2001 18:55:27 -0800
From: Judi Cooper
Does anyone know if the Cattle Egret is still at Lake Merritt in Oakland?
Thanks, Judi