I’ve been seeing so many cute little Goldfinches as I walk around my neighborhood, I went birding the other day with the intent of capturing some in the beautiful sunshine. Always a bad idea…

I went to the Shoreline Trail (also part of the Palo Alto Baylands), but a different area than I had birded before. It was getting later in the afternoon, about an hour or so before sunset, and the wind had picked up a bit of speed. I don’t often lug my tripod around with me because I prefer to stay mobile and walk around; thus I knew I had my work set out for me. My lens is rather large and likes to act like a sail when I’m trying to take pictures.

Regardless, I was able to stay still long enough to get some decent pics. The American Avocets are nicely showing off their breeding plumage, and I did stop for a while to watch them sweep their upcurved bills along the top of the water as they fed. Of course the best picture was of one who had been napping!

Speaking of napping, there were LOADS of Short-billed Dowitchers (and I’m sure some Long-billed as well, I just didn’t actually identify any of them) taking in an afternoon snooze.

Though they did take pity on me and exploded in a beautiful synchronous flight.

 Some other birds of note for the day: a pair of Gadwalls. 

A Western Grebe.  I need to find where I’ve misplaced it, but I have an awesome picture of my parent’s lab in a face-off with one of these guys in the ocean.  It’s really cool.  They look so menacing with that long sword-like bill and blazing red eyes!

 A Willet.  I remember back to when I was in college taking a field ornithology lab (one of my favorite classes EVER, duh!  Even though we had our field trips starting at 6am on Saturday mornings!  Totally worth it.), my instructor told us that Willets were rather easy to identify.  “They are pretty much nondescript!  So if you see nothing in particular that stands out, chances are it’s a Willet!”  I’m sure there will be some that argue with that logic, but it worked for me so far!

I love to watch terns hunting along the water’s edge.  This trip, most of them were being lazy bums and just hanging out.

This is fun.  When I was flipping through my pictures from the trip, I took one look and a song filled my head… One of these things is not like the other…

Can you find it? 

There is some structure along the trail that is the home to some Barn Cliff Swallows.  The eves are very low so you can almost see into their muddy nests.  I can’t help but think that some of them get bothered and gasp maybe even vandalized by hoodlums. 

Then, of course, just as I am resigning myself to go home without my planned pictures of those cute little Goldfinches, this beauty flits in front of me and feeds for a few minutes until another family travelling the trail scares him away.  But at least I got my wish!