[EBB Sightings] Orange Bishop

As Bill points out, the bird was seen in the south bay (Milpitas, Santa Clara County), but Chuck posted his great photos of the beautiful bird here, and some birders have expressed interest here, so I'm commenting here. It's only two miles south of Alameda County, anyway.  Orange bishop is not on the ABA checklist (it's not countable), but it's very pretty, and I've never seen one, so I went looking for it today. I didn't find it, but I had a lovely walk along the Coyote Creek Trail, and I saw many other delightful birds. 

To get to the site, turn off McCarthy Blvd. onto Ranch Drive (posted "no outlet") across from Borders (off Highway 237 at McCarthy Ranch).  Several parking spaces are in a circle just outside the Cisco complex's parking lot next to the Coyote Creek Trail sign. Walk north on the trail next to the squash patch - plenty of crowned sparrows to enjoy - past Cisco until you come to a small farm.  

Coyote Creek flows on the west side of the trail, and birds fly from the trees on that side into the crops on the east side. Highlights were two northern flickers and two Nuttall's woodpeckers flying into the corn stalks and a Lincoln's sparrow on a post among the tomatoes.  A fox sparrow kicked around on the west side and two cedar waxwings perched high up in the trees by the creek. I looked unsuccessfully for the orange bishop as far north as the green-roofed barn at the next property, where I found a red-shouldered hawk on the wires beside the trail.

Earlier is better in terms of the light. At noon, the whole area was bright, but after 2:00, the west side fell into shade as the sun sank in the sky.


Stephanie Floyd
Fremont





--- On Tue, 11/18/08, Bill Bousman  wrote:

> From: Bill Bousman 
> Subject: RE: [EBB Sightings] Orange Bishop
> To: "Laura Gee" , "'Judi Sierra'" , sightings at diabloaudubon.com
> Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 1:44 PM
> Dear EBB Folks:
> 
> I recommend you purchase a copy of the Santa Clara County
> Breeding Bird Atlas, available at the Santa Clara Valley
> Audubon Society, to know more about the status of birds in
> the South Bay.  But $40 is $40, so below is my contribution
> to you from an appendix in the atlas.  By the way, the
> citation to Smithson is for his Masters Thesis, this is our
> own Scott Smithson, now director of the San Francisco Bay
> Bird Observatory.  By the way, some recent South Bay photos
> show these birds feeding on tule seeds.
> 
> Bill Bousman
> Menlo Park
> 
>