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GGAS Field Trip Report

October 28, 2020 – Lake Merritt

Trip Leader(s):

Hilary Powers
Ruth Tobey

Date/Location:

October 28, 2020
Lake Merritt

Trip Info:

Number of Participants: 12
Number of Species: 47

The October 4th-Wednesday (non) Golden Gate Audubon lake walk drew a somewhat scary 12 participants, evoking a nervous “Hey, we’re a lot less than six feet apart” on at least one occasion. We do try, but especially under the trees the places from which a given bird can be seen don’t offer a lot of choice. If the turnout continues to grow, we may need to split the group for the park section of the trip in coming months….

But it wasn’t just birders who were crowding around. The day opened with a true feeding frenzy: a few hundred Double-crested Cormorants (mostly bronze juveniles) were playing hopscotch down the lake, clearly in pursuit of something fast-moving, while dozens of Brown Pelicans of all ages swooped and dived above them among a cloud of assorted gulls, American White Pelicans paddled along snarfing things up from the water, and both Great and Snowy Egrets lined the shore looking to grab anything forced close to them. Unfortunately, it was the far shore – making the details hard to make out, especially with only binoculars for optics.

So what were they catching? Fish, presumably, but we couldn’t see until a Ring-billed Gull came flapping over to the floats with something big and white clamped in its beak. “What’s he got? What’s he got?” A ten-inch feather, broad and blunt-ended, which provided several minutes’ play value for the gull and no information at all for the humans.

As the fisher-flock adjourned to the floats and islands to rest and digest, the birders proceeded past the paddock to head down the lake. The big pond in the paddock was full of ducks – practically shoulder to shoulder and beak to tail – almost all in the classic Mallard plumage but of a wide range in sizes. Some were small enough to be true wild birds; others clearly had had parents and grandparents on the farm, picking up the super-sizing genes developed there. 

The area near the Rotary Nature Center was thin of company – just some coots and one adventurous Lesser Scaup – but the little olive tree just past the playground was aflutter with tiny birds. Bushtits for starters, looking as always like flying mice, but in numbers even more outrageous than usual. The joke about Bushtits is that if you have to report a count, say 17: a plausible prime number for lots. This time, I’da doubled that – lots and lots on every twig. And where they weren’t, there were Ruby-crowned Kinglets (the first of the season) and assorted warblers, plus a couple of Anna’s Hummingbirds hovering for some reason between the branches and the ground, with their scarlet gorgets catching rays of sun like little warning lights.

We walked close enough to the fountain at El Embarcadero to see the pair of Canvasbacks. That end of the lake was doing a brisk business in scaup – both Greater and Lesser, not that the difference makes much difference if you’re not a scaup yourself – and thoroughly non-ruddy Ruddy Ducks. And American Coots, of course, well on their way to their usual top-poundage-on-the-lake winter status. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but plausible: they’re small birds, but there are droves and bunches of them.

Across Bellevue and heading towards Children’s Fairyland (where it was a come-in-costume day, adding miniature dragons and princesses and whatnot to the scene), we paused to enjoy a pair of juvenile Red-tailed Hawks circling overhead – either sister and brother or one much lower than the other, as it looked huge by comparison. The ground was jumping with sparrows, mostly White-crowned arriving for the winter, but some Golden-crowned and one Fox Sparrow, the first ever recorded on an October walk. And – common bird in an uncommon spot – a Black Phoebe sat like an angel atop my favorite tree, the prettiest Dawn Redwood in the world, which spreads its branches beside the Garden Center building.

All told, we encountered 47 species of birds, the most since 2015 (which gave us 48) – a throng of another sort. And it was a lovely day, sunny and not too hot, with only the occasional cheery chime from the bad-air-o-meter beside the Nature Center, so we had yet another in Lake Merritt’s unbroken string of very good days.

More Reports

July 9, 2021 – Coyote Hills Bike and Bird

What a beautiful day filled with 66 species of birds! The day started off great at 6:30 am with a perfect temperature of 65 degrees,

Read More »

May 26, 2021 – Lake Merritt

Birders have this game. When the day is going well – and more often when it’s going badly – someone will announce “I’d like to

Read More »

June 23, 2021 – Lake Merritt

At the start, it looked like a really quiet morning, with the two leaders and one regular so consistent and so well-informed that he amounts

Read More »

April 28, 2021 – Lake Merritt

Thirteen happy birders gathered for the still-unofficial April 4th-Wednesday walk at Lake Merritt – not quite so many as in a non-pandemic month, but close. 

Read More »

March 24, 2021 – Lake Merritt

The still-unofficial 4th-Wednesday Golden Gate Audubon walk drew 13 birders – much less scary now with so many of us fully vaccinated – and the

Read More »

February 24, 2021 – Lake Merritt

Falcon Flies at Lake Merritt! And perches. And looks around. And takes a little circling flight. And perches. And sits looking down at the lake

Read More »

Our Mission

The Golden Gate Audubon Society engages people to experience the wonder of birds and to translate that wonder into actions which protect native bird populations and their habitats.

Home page photo of a Bald Eagle by Rick Lewis. Home page photos rotate on an occasional basis. If you have a Bay Area bird photo you would like us to consider, email us at rnakano@goldengateaudubon.org.

Home page bird illustrations by Tex Buss. We are grateful for her generous donation of time and talent!

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Golden Gate Audubon
2530 San Pablo Avenue, Suite G
Berkeley, California 94702

Phone: 510.843.2222

Office hours: Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Golden Gate Audubon Society  is a
not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Our federal tax ID number is 94-6086896

Manage your GGAS account online

Now you can manage all your GGAS business online — renew your membership, update your contact information, view past donations, or sign up for events such as classes, Birdathon or the Christmas Bird Count. Click here to access your account. (You’ll need to create a login name and password if you don’t have one already. If you forget your password, click on the “forgot your password” link.) You can also sign up for our new GGAS Chat to get updates on trips, talk with other members, and more!

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