[EBB Sightings] More Band-tailed Pigeons, Berkeley

Took a walk up through the Berkeley Hills this morning with my parents visiting from out of town.  We surprising stumbled onto at least 6-8 Band-tailed Pigeons flying among some Eucalyptus at the top of Buena Vista Way.  They are impressively large, and they were quite active.  To get there, you go up Buena Vista from La Loma steeply uphill.  Eventually you reach an intersection with Del Mar.  We went right at the fork which is apparently still Buena Vista.  Maybe 50 yards ahead there were some Eucalytus on the downhill side of the road (basically in some backyards) that had the pigeons.

We had a couple of other nice treats on our walk.  A pair of circling hawks that were about eye level although distant.  They clearly had reddish breasts and long straight tails, and were decent sized.  I thought they were Coopers' Hawks, but there were clearly white tufts on the bilateral rumps at the base of the tail.  The only thing that fits this description per our various books would be an immature Northern Harrier, but I thought I had seen these white rump tufts on Coopers' before.  Anyway, they weren't the usual Red-tails that soar these hills. 

Finally, lower down there was a rather large group of Bewick's wrens behind the Hillside School (seen from up on La Loma) making a racket, chasing each other and I suspect preparing to pair off; I had never seen so many of these guys and gals (hard to estimate how many: could only see 3-4 at a time, but there seemed to be more by sound) in one place before, and they seemed to not care at all about our movements.


Good birding

Jay Dodge
Berkeley