Some days you get lucky (Cattle Egret!)
Because of work and Covid, I completely missed spring migration this year, which was a bit disappointing given my goal of really trying to focus on my birding more this year. But despite that, this has turned out to be quite a good year for my with the birds.
County Rarity — Cattle Egret
For instance, sometimes you get lucky. A few weeks ago I had a day off of work and I spent part of it out exploring. I had originally planned to try a birding spot I’ve never visited here in the county, but I got confused about directions and ultimately decided to stop being lost and headed off down into Coyote Valley to see what was up. Since I had mostly been spending time over at Coyote Valley Open Space Preserve and just doing quick stops on Laguna Avenue on the way home, I decided to focus on Laguna more. The Western part of Laguna Avenue (between Santa Teresa and the hills) has been the mainstay place for Coyote Valley winter birding for years, although since the OSP has opened I think it’s less birded; on top of that, the fields around it have shifted crops more to alfalfa from pasture and when the cows aren’t around, it seems a lot quieter. They are pasturing some cows out there this winter, and that means the blackbirds and starlings are there in large numbers, and that generally means better birding overall.
The birding that day (see my eBird report) wasn’t exceptional, although the usual suspects were easily found: Yellow-Billed Magpie is a regular here (and at the OSP), and then wintering American Kestrels and Say’s Phoebe were there. There were Brewer’s Blackbirds in the fields with the cattle, and of course European Starlings, and this winter there’s a large flock wintering in this area — 400+ birds by my count. And out with the cows were some Great Egrets.
I had literally packed up the camera and was leaving to go home when I noticed a Snowy Egret out in the pasture in with the Great Egrets. Now, Great Egrets are common in the pastures, along with the Great Blue Herons, but Snowy Egrets stay closer to water and that caught my attention. Why was it there? And then I noticed it had a yellow bill.
Snowy Egret bills aren’t yellow. At which point something in my brain pulled the fire alarm. I stopped, hauled out my gear and took a good close look, and then hauled out the camera and took a set of photos. Once I did that, I hauled out the phone and sent off emails to let the other birders know we had a Cattle Egret in Coyote Valley. Once I did that, I put stuff away again and headed home. That was a bit of a logistical mistake in retrospect, because when the first of the other birders arrived about half and hour later it had left and wasn’t found again that day. It was, fortunately, seen the next day and seen on and off for a few days after that by many other birders.
Here’s why birders came chasing the bird — the last time this species was reported in Santa Clara County was 2015. So having a rare bird like this is going to cause birders to twitch and chase it. I’m glad it was re-found, although if I’d stayed until other birders got there I might have helped them know where to go look when it took off. And fortunately, I have documentary pictures (as to many others now as well).
The Cattle Egret is roughly the size of the Snowy Egret, but it looks more like a miniature Great. The Snowy Egret has a black bill and dark legs with yellow feet, where the Cattle Egret has that yellow bill and the top of the head can have an orange color to it. This one had a very faint orange on it. It, as the name might suggest, is a pasture bird, and loves to eat the bugs that loves to eat the stuff cows produce and leave in the pasture (so do the Great Egrets, as well as Crows, Ravens and lots of other things. Where there are cows, there is cow poo, and where there is cow poo, there are bugs eating the cow poo and recycling it for us. And these birds come and eat the bugs). We have seen Cattle Egret in the County, as well as San Mateo County to the north, but they are much more common in the central valley. This one is one that got lost or went exploring, and it looks like he’s probably headed back to find the rest of his flock.
As it turns out, since Mother Nature has a sense of humor, that weekend Laurie and I day-tripped out to Merced NWR, and as we drove through downtown Los Banos, we drove through a flock of about 20 Snowy and 20 Cattle Egrets all hanging out on the lawns near the airport eating bugs. Because of course we did.
Being the first to find a rarity like this is always a thrill, and getting other birders onto it makes it even better. I haven’t done this often, but when it happens, it’s a lot of fun.
Birding in the Year of the Covid
At the start of 2020, I like to set a few goals to help guide me in where I spend my time and energy. With my birding, I really wanted to spend time exploring more locations that I haven’t visited regularly — when I’m busy and only birding around the edges of work and life commitments I tend to focus on a few spots I know and like visiting. I also set a goal of seeing 200 species. That latter is a goal I set every year, and to be honest, I’ve never gotten there, because I don’t tend to chase rarities, and so I’m spending more time revisiting species I’ve already seen. That’s changing a bit in the last year or so, but I enjoy watching locations and their bird populations change and evolve as the seasons move past more than I like the grind of trying to boost my year list numbers. I also wanted to spend more time birding in county, since in the the previous years I really put a lot of energy into the central valley refuges.
The virus put a kick to the knee to this, of course, and I filed only one eBird report in April and one in May, and the one in May was reporting what I saw visiting my bird feeder in the back yard. As of when I write this, I’ve filed 107 eBird reports this year, averaging 2 a week, and by far my most prolific year ever. That includes 8 locations I’d never birded before and three more I hadn’t been to in over two years. As of today I’ve seen 146 species in Santa Clara county, beating 2019’s 137 and 2 short of my all time high (2008 for 148). My global list (okay, my California list, since I haven’t left the state) is 182, up from 177 in 2019 but short of my best ever, which was 199 in 2010. I think I have a chance at 150 county species and I may, if I get lucky, hit 200 species but I doubt it. But overall, it’s been a really good, and more importantly, fun birding year for me. Along the way I started that Birding 101 series here on the blog, wrote the Ulistac Natural Area guide for Santa Clara Valley Audubon and and helped out or reviewed a number of the other guides. I’ve also written a number of things for the SCVAS publications. Kept me busy and pushed me to work harder at the birding this year, too.
I’ve added five new species to my life list: Tricolored Heron, Indian Peafowl, Vermillion Flycatcher, Pygmy Nuthatch and Pacific Golden-Plover. Here in the county, I added three: Pygmy Nuthatch, Brandt’s Cormorant and Pacific Golden-Plover for 303 and 223 species respectively. As the list grows, it’s harder to add to it without twitching, but I feel like this was a solid and productive year for me, both for improving my own skills and doing more to help teach and mentor others.
And all of that was despite Covid-19, not because of it. So maybe some good comes out of what has been an absolutely crazy and sometimes really depressing and frustrating year.
I still have a December to see what I can do to add to these numbers, and I’m taking a week off work specifically to daytrip out and do some intense birding work for a few days. We’ll see how that goes, but even if the year ended now, I’d call it a complete success.
I’ve also been spending more time with the camera doing bird phography again and enjoying it after some time feeling mostly frustrated and unproductive. I think sometimes I just put too much pressure on myself to produce and that of course screws things up. Hopefully, that continues. And for your enjoyment, here are some of the photos I’ve taken in the last couple of weeks that I really like…
