A Photography Big Day for Santa Clara Valley Audubon
On April 28 I did a fundraising Photography Big Day for Santa Clara Valley Audubon. This is my second of two big days I’m doing as part of the annual birdathon to raise money for their educational programs, and my goal was to raise at least $1500 for them — a goal I’ve already surpassed, and thank you to everyone who has donated. (it is not, I’ll note, too late to add a bit to the proceeds for this good cause. As I write this we’re very close to the $50,000 goal and your help can get us over the top). I ended the day with 46 species, a decent number, I think, but we’ll get into that later.
Because of work commitments and a last minute (of course) “oh, I have to answer this email” involving our intended move north, I got out and on the road a bit later than expected. I started at a place I skipped on my last big day, the Shoreline Lake/Coast Casey forebay area, parking on Terminal and entering the south gate a bit after 10AM. I spent a bit over an hour exploring the lake and the area between the lake and the pumphouse, then up the path and back out through the north entrance and back to my car. I had 30 species seen and 15 of those photographed. It was nice and birdy with a few special birds, including Black Skimmers on the lake island where they now breed, and a special appearance by a Spotted Sandpiper that popped up onto a piling and bobbed it’s tail in my direction.
My second stop was Palo Alto Baylands, where I hoped to pick up more shorebirds. It did not disappoint. In about 45 minutes I grabbed 24 species, some overlapping Shoreline, and another 14 images. Highlight bird is probably a dunlin in full breeding plumage and a nice sight, and after sorting through hundreds of Western Sandpipers in dozens of photos on the mud, finding one — literally one — Least Sandpiper in among them.
By the time I finished these two stops we were well after lunch and I felt pressed for time. It was also warming up (this was our first day hitting the 80’s in a while), and I wanted to get into different terrain, so I headed off to Milpitas and Ed Levin Park. I got there a little before 1PM, but only spent half an hour around Sandy Wool because it just wasn’t very birdy. Probably the highlight bird was a Great-Tailed Grackle, which have become fairly common there. Down the road from the main area is the Spring Valley area, which has been fairly birdy recently and has some Lawrence’s Goldfinches hanging out — which, of course, I dipped on, but in 45 minutes I found 15 species including a Red-Shouldered Hawk and added 3 more photos to the set.
I knew I wanted to get to Coyote Valley if I could and if I waited too long, traffic would make things nasty, so I decided after Spring Valley to head south, given the relative non-birdy nature of the Milpitas area on that warm day. I arrived at Coyote Valley OSP, where it was also warm but with a nice breeze, set up my camp chair and sat down to see what showed up. Unfortunately, the resident Rock Wrens were a no-show, and I didn’t see any Western Bluebirds, either. It, like Ed Levin, wasn’t super birdy, but it did produce some nice bits.
The big one was a Cassin’s Kingbird, a rather notable and unusual species compared to the more common Western Kingbird. When I arrived, I noticed a grey bird up on a wire that I initially thought was a loggerhead shrike. I later had a bird fly in and perch in a tree near me for a bit where I recognized it as a Kingbird. It flew off with a loud call that I at the time considered weird for a Western Kingbird. it wasn’t until I got home and looked at photos that I realized that bird on the wire was a Kingbird, and it looked like Cassin’s, not Western to me. I pinged a few other local birders and got general agreement on that, and then I remembered the weird call, so I compared both species recorded calls, and it was clearly a lower toned, louder beer-beer-beer of Cassin’s, not a western, that yodelled at me leaving that tree.
Cassin’s, FWIW, is a county bird for me, so that was kinda fun. I added in pictures of a Turkey Vulture, a way far off Magpie, and a Mockingbird. No eagles, not rock wrens, but one or two very active pairs of Bullock’s Orioles, and at one point I saw a female slink in and enter a nest, which you will never see unless you see a bird entering or leaving it.
After the OSP, I hit up Starbucks where I got a picture of my first house sparrow of the day. I added two photos taken of my feeder via the trap camera — Chestnut-Backed chickadee and a late Pine Siskin. I don’t expect these numbers to add up, because I’m working off memory and I’m sure I got locations wrong on a couple, but the end result of 46 was good in my mind given the slow birding all afternoon.
I had planned one more stop, and flipped a coin between Calero Reservoir or Hellyer county Park, chose the latter, and realized the traffic was bad enough to make getting there painful, so after these five stops, I called it and headed home. I ended up doing 3.10 miles of walking on the day, which may not seem like a lot to you, but my knees and feet would like to disagree.
In retrospect, I held out Ulistac (again) as a place to make a final stop if I had time and energy, and I had neither. I would have been much better off if I’d done that instead of Ed Levin, especially since the Lawrence’s Goldfinches hid. Otherwise, since one of my goals was to visit some of my long time favorite spots, I feel pretty good about the route. Given my limited walking these days, I needed a route that compensated for that and I think this worked out pretty well.
Thoughts on Big Days
I’ve never been a fan of big days, because it’s a self-imposed set of deadlines that adds a competitive aspect that’s not normally part of my birding. I come away from doing two of them this year for SCVAS continuing to feel that way — I may well do one in the future as a charity thing, but I won’t do one as a personal challenge. I liked the photography big day even less, and in my planning found myself thinking of it as “lots of bad pictures done quickly”, and as you can see below, yeah, that’s kinda where it ended up. I haven’t done any processing on these, they’re all basically straight out of camera and some of them will actually be pretty nice when properly processed, but this kind of run and gun isn’t my style and so I doubt I’ll ever do one of these again. There are personal preferences only; don’t assume I think anyone else should agree with me and these opinions. If you like them? Awesome.
I also think, for what it’s worth, that everyone who’s moderately serious about birding should do a big day. you won’t know until you do whether you like the process or not, and it’s worth trying once.
But, since we are still not doing in-person groups via SCVAS, my normal big sit groups couldn’t happen, and this allowed me to put in time and energy for a good cause. I have no complaints, other than about body parts I wish worked better and more reliably than they do.
Give my ongoing plans, these might be my final formal activities for SCVAS before we move north, and if so… I think I ended my run doing work with them in a good way. Met and beat my fundraising goal (but there’s still time to make it even better), and heck, even added a county lifer. One of the challenges of a big day in Santa Clara County is how many different areas you really need to touch to get a the wide variety of species in the county, and the amount of driving that requires — and the traffic that gets in your way. But I think, overall, my route hit the highlights, especially my personal favorite spots, when I combine the two big days together.
So I feel good about this year’s Birdathon work I’ve done…
