Post #181 - Bay Area bike-birding in the age of COVID - 1,000 county ticks achieved!

Though we've been in the firm grip of COVID for nearly 4 months, I've been doing a ton of bike-birding across that span. How much is a ton? Well, in 2019, I biked 2,086 miles. To the midpoint of this year, I've already covered 1,661 miles, an increase which is counterintuitively attributable to COVID for two reasons.

First, COVID has forced parking areas closures at many reserves to prevent overcrowding. While I don't usually drive to bird in the Bay Area, I always drive to photograph because I'm not going to lug my 600mm f/4 lens and multiple camera bodies on my bike. I also like to arrive hella early for photography, so I'm not going to start biking at 3am to be at Hayward Regional Shoreline for a 6am sunrise. With access restricted, I've been doing less photography and more biking. 

1,661 miles is equal to driving Tucson > SD > Seattle

Second, I've cancelled several out-of-state trips and tours which has freed up time for bike-birding, most notably a 5-day loop which took me east through Alameda to explore Stanislaus, San Joaquin, and Contra Costa Counties for the first time (at least by bike). By the time I added some unmapped miles to the rough route below, I cranked out 290 miles across those days and added 5 birds to my Bay Area bike list: Ring-necked Pheasant, Phainopepla, Lawrence's Goldfinch, Bell's Sparrow, and Swainson's Hawk. With the additions of Hooded Warbler (SF), Yellow-throated Warbler (SF), Purple Martin (SM), and Black-chinned Sparrow (SM) closer to home, I've run that list to 316 species.

My 5-day, 290-mile inland loop

Mines Road in Alameda County

(L) Lawrence's Goldfinch on Mines Road in Santa Clara County

(R) Hooded Warbler at San Pedro Valley Park in San Mateo

When I moved to the Bay Area in May of 2017, I set three bike-birding goals for myself. The first was to ride 50 miles per week, an aim I've achieved when my out-of-area time is forgiven. Second, I wanted to find 300 species under my own power, a plateau I reached with the addition of Rose-breasted Grosbeak in San Francisco on January 11th. Lastly, I wanted to amass 1,000 total ticks because it would motivate me to explore different areas/habitats within each county. I stood at 996 ticks before my 5-day loop, but low-hanging fruit in previously-unexplored counties helped me shatter the 1K ceiling; my total is now 1,212 with a few additions since that trip. I'd be stoked to do an extended loop around the North Bay to visit Sonoma, Napa, and Solano Counties for the first time, but I suspect COVID is going to put the kibosh on that plan, at least for the foreseeable future.

Totals taken from my biking-specific eBird account

And check this out - county birding beast Jim Lomax has started birding by bike! Well, sort of. He drove his two-wheeled transport across the bay to aid his San Mateo Black-chinned Sparrow pursuit and was about to fold the search when I ran into him. Fortunately, I heard the bird singing high on the hillside above us and was able to get him onto it. We'll need to upgrade him to racks and panniers before his next adventure. Gears would help too....

That's what I've been up to on the bike-birding front these last few months. With so many activities restricted under the the current circumstances, it's been nice to have a passion which hasn't been impacted. Bike-birding is even more isolating than car-based birding (no gas station stops!), and I'm hoping conditions will allow me to continue the torrid pace I've established through the first half of this year. I'll post updates as my adventures unfold, so stay tuned for those. Cheers....

Post #135 - Recap of April 23 Bay Area Bicycle Big Day!

This past Monday, Rob Furrow, Josiah Clark, Sam Saffron, and I set out to break the California bicycle Big Day record of 187 species established by Rob and Josiah in 2015. Our route was a permutation of that record-setting route, and we hoped that an additional two pairs of eyes would be enough to push us beyond that benchmark. Conditions Sunday night into Monday were about perfect; there was little overnight wind and temperatures were in the low-50s when we assembled at 2am in Half Moon Bay. We spent the next 20 hours on our bikes, and our route was roughly divided into 4 legs. Those were, very roughly:

LEG 1 - The Coast (2am - 9:45am): coastal slope owling, Princeton Harbor, ocean, Pillarcitos Creek, Highway 92, and Skylawn Cemetery

LEG 2 - Cañana Road (9:45am - 11am): Crystal Springs Reservoir, mixed oak woodlands, chapparal, and neighborhoods to SF Bayshore

LEG 3 - SF Bay (11am - 4pm): San Francisquito Creek mouth, Palo Alto Baylands, Shoreline, Lower SF Bay, Alviso

LEG 4 - Ed Levin (4pm - 10pm): Coyote Creek, Ed Levin, Upper Calavaros Road, Alviso (again)

OK, with that outline, let's get rolling!

Leg 1 - The Coast (2am - 9:45am)

We immediately found Great Horned Owl and Barn Owl along Highway 1 and clapped-up a Sora at the Verde Road Pond as we made our way up Purismo Creek Road. Northern Saw-Whet Owl was a great heard-only bird along that route, and we crossed over to Burleigh Murray to add a vocalizing, predawn MacGillivray's Warbler. After that we shook off a flat tire and headed north towards Princeton Harbor for the dawn hours. 

Biking south down Highway 1 at 2:30am

We taped Virginia Rail at Mavericks, surprised a Wandering Tattler at the base of the jetty, and climbed the bluffs to find two Marbled Murrelets on the ocean. After that, we made a brief stop at Venice/Pillarcitos for gulls. Though both Laughing and Glaucous had been scouted in the days before our effort, we mustered only Western, California, Herring, and Glaucous-winged. The general lack of Larids (Heermann's, Mew) with the combined misses of Brant, Brown Pelican, Sooty Shearwater, Pink-footed Shearwater, Horned Grebe, and Surfbird meant we did adequately but not outstandingly on the ocean. We were never going to find all of those misses, but we really needed at least a few of those to complement the tattler and the murrelets.

Burleigh Murray flat tire at 4:00am

We did salvage some nice land birds as we climbed up Highway 92 towards Skyline: several Olive-sided Flycatchers, an early Swainson's Thrush, and a singing Pacific Wren. Skylawn Cemetery yielded Red Crossbill and Pine Siskin with minimal effort. We were at 102 species by the time we dropped from Skylawn at 9:45 - on perfect schedule.

Leg 1: ~ 31.6 miles (2am - 9:45am)

Leg 2 - Cañana Road (9:45am - 11:40am)

The coast behind us, we continued down Highway 92 to reach Cañada Road. We missed both Ring-necked Duck and Wood Duck on Crystal Spring reservoir, the first mostly due to seasonality and the second mostly due to chance. But we did add Grasshopper Sparrow, Lazuli Bunting, Black-throated Gray Warbler, singing Cassin's Vireo, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Vaux's Swift, and host of raptors along Cañada. We descended along Woodside Road and wound our way through the contrasting neighborhoods of Atherton and East Palo Alto before hitting the bayshore. We were at 126 species at that point.

Leg 2: ~ 21.5 miles (9:45 - 11:40am)

Riding along Crystal Spring Reservoir at 10am

Leg 3 - SF Bay (11:40 am - 4pm)

We timed our bay arrival to the falling tide so as to add shorebirds on the exposed mudflats. We were mostly on schedule but the tide was a bit farther out than expected, which, coupled with heat shimmer, made the birding tougher than it needed to be. We filled in most of our missing shorebirds but missed Red Knot and Ruddy Turnstone because of tide and heat. Beyond shorebirds, we dug out Common Goldeneye, Northern Pintail, Canvasback, and Ridgway's Rail. Our transit through the Baylands turned up Bald Eagle and a surprise Lesser Yellowlegs. Alviso and surrounds yielded Burrowing Owl and a single Red-necked Phalarope. We managed to grind out only a single Cinnamon Teal but missed Blue-winged Teal, Wilson's Snipe, Say's Phoebe, and Eurasian Wigeon. We had 165 species by the end of this leg.

Leg 3: ~18.6 miles (11:40 - 4pm)

San Francisquito Creek Shorebirding at noon

Leg 4 - Ed Levin (4pm -10pm)
We had biked ~72 miles by the time we started this final leg, so fatigue was starting to set in. We detoured along Coyote Creek to add Yellow Warbler then headed east towards Ed Levin Park. Reaching that destination after some painfully steep and very hot climbing we added Wild Turkey, Green Heron, Golden Eagle, American Kestrel, Rufous Hummingbird, Yellow-billed Magpie, White-breasted Nuthatch, House Wren, Western Tanager, Lark Sparrow, and two singing Rufous-crowned Sparrows. Climbing even farther up Calaveras Road (not exactly mapped due to Google thinking road is closed) we notched Rock Wren and Western Screech-Owl. We then turned around and dropped all the way back to Alviso where we dipped on Black Rail to end the day. At 10pm we were out of birds, so we closed up shop.

Summary
We finished with a very respectable 178 species in our 20 cycling hours. In that time we rode almost exactly 100 miles and climbed well over 4,000 vertical feet. It was a really fun day and a great introduction to bike Big Days. This was very different than anything I did on my 2014 bike Big Year, mostly because of the combined amount of riding and birding over those 20 hours. The time pressure was more acute, and it was frustrating to have to leave areas so soon after reaching them. But we had to keep moving so as to make sure we spent adequate time in each habitat and reached everywhere we wanted to bird.

Now that I've had a full run-through, I have a good idea what to expect on future iterations. This route has been adapted by Rob and Josiah over the past few years, and they should really be commended for their pioneering bike-birding efforts. Hopefully Sam and I will be able to offer some constructive suggestions for next year, and I know that with additional attempts we should be able to mount another challenge to the still-standing California record of 187 (the national record is 193 from Texas). 

Side note
I actually rode my bike to Half Moon Bay on Sunday afternoon (~15 miles) and home from Alviso on Tuesday morning (~30 miles) so that I could count all the birds we found on the Big Day on my Bay Area Green List as well. With the additions of Golden Eagle, Wandering Tattler, Northern Saw-whet Owl, Cassin's Vireo, Yellow-billed Magpie, Swainson's Thrush, Lazuli Bunting, and Rufous-crowned Sparrow, my Bay Area Green List now stands at 250 species.

***Bike Big Days and bike Big Years need not start and end in the same place. That would penalize anyone living in a less-than-ideal area. There's also no point in requiring the loop to be closed if people are going to drive somewhere optimal to start and end anyway. As long as the whole route is self-powered, that's all that matters. True Green lists, however, necessarily be accrued from a single point (like my San Mateo apartment, for example).

Had to make a lunch stop after riding 

home from Alviso on Tuesday morning....

Post #134 - Bay Area Bike Big Day Preparation

How the heck did I not write for the last month? So sorry, but I'm back now. Let's get going!

As each new spring arrives, birders reacquaint themselves with northbound migrants that spent the winter at more southerly latitudes. When I lived in the Northeastern US, Eastern Phoebes and American Woodcocks were always the first spring arrivals, and now that I'm in California Hooded Orioles and Wilson's Warblers are the annual pioneers. With that influx of migrants on top of lingering wintering species, species diversity is usually highest in spring in many places across North America. And those circumstances invite the one of the most entertaining sorts of bird projects - Big Days! I have never actually been involved in a Big Day, so it's only fitting that my first will be a bicycle-based effort here in the Bay Area with bicycle Big Day gurus Rob Furrow and Josiah Clark at the end of this month.

It's tough to beat this view...

Rob and Josiah have been doing this for a number of years and have painstakingly optimized the route over that time. This year we are going to ride a permutation of their 2015 route along which they amassed an incredible 187 species. We will start high enough on the Pacific side of the coastal mountains to collect predawn owls. We'll then head down to Pillar Point for dawn migrants, harbor birds, and seabirds. From there it will be over the coastal mountains, hopefully collecting a few finches en route. After descending we'll hit the bayshore for shorebirds and waterfowl before continuing beyond the bay and gain a bit of elevation into hotter, drier habitat in the late afternoon. As the sun sets we'll head back down to the bayshore to search for Black Rail and a few other nocturnal birds. As mapped, the route will be ~85 miles with around 4,000 feet of total climbing, but it'll probably be closer to 95-100 miles once we drop back down to the bay for the night. We'd love to find 190 species, but that will certainly take some luck!

Street view of the route. Mileage indicated every 5 miles.

Satellite/Topo view of the route

The trick with any Big Day, bicycle or other, is to visit at many different habitats as possible without spending too much time in any one of them. It's therefore important to have a premeditated idea/timetable of how much time should be spent in each habitat. Big Days are infinitely more time sensitive than are Big Years, so that will be a bit of an adjustment for me given my 2014 Big Year experience. Ron and Josiah have worked all this out, so I'll just move whenever they tell me to!

I've cycled more than 90-100 miles in a day many times but usually in big chucks with just a few breaks along the way. We'll be doing a lot of starting and stopping, so it might be tough to get into a good rhythm along this route. I'm in decent (but not great) cycling shape right now, so I think I'll be able to manage it regardless. I'm actually more curious about how I'll maintain birding focus since I've never done any sort of Big Day before, but I'm sure Rob and Josiah will keep me on track. It will also be really interesting to see what effect my extra pair of eyes will have, particularly along the coast where scanning massive amounts of open water is the most likely way to add additional and oddball birds. 

So, that's a very general idea of how we expect out bicycle Big Day to unfold. Right now we are hoping to make April 23 the day, but some of that will depend on wind and weather. April 30 is also an option, but that's a bit later than ideal as we're cutting it close on lingering waterfowl anyway. I'm hoping to take a few videos at points along our route, and if I can manage that I'll be sure to share them in the blogpost that will recap our efforts. Please stay tuned!

And since we need at least one bird photo......

Western Meadowlark - Sturnella neglecta

Riverside County, California, March 2018

Canon 500mm f/4 IS + 1.4x III on EOS 7D Mark II

1/2000 at f/5.6, ISO 640

Post #133 - Bay Area Bike Birding update and related thoughts on the '5-Mile Radius' project

First - Please check out the Ecuador piece that I wrote for the Nature Travel Network. It distills my 5 Ecuador posts down to a much quicker read! 

Since I spent a good chunk of this past Saturday successfully chasing a continuing Broad-billed Hummingbird in San Francisco (a county first), I figured it would be a good time for an update on my most recent Bay Area bike-birding exploits. After that I'd like to spend a bit of time discussing the recently-popularized 5-Mile Radius and how it could provide the perfect gateway into bike-birding. Here's a map of my route to the hummingbird. It was 22.6 miles each way plus ~5 miles around Golden Gate Park afterwards for ~50 miles total. I didn't bother with the camera since it adds much weight for what would have been crappy record shots anyway.

My one-way route to SF. I rode in it 1:31 (15 

MPH ave), much faster than the 2:10 Google 

suggests. Return trip 15 mins slower with traffic.

Broad-billed Hummingbird was species #236 that I've found from my bike since moving to the Bay Area last May. The vast majority of these have been observed in my home San Mateo County, but I've tacked on a few additional birds by venturing into neighboring San Francisco and Santa Clara Counties. The most notable species that I've added so far, beyond the hummer, are Red-footed Booby, Dusky Warbler, Tufted Duck, and LeConte's Sparrow, the last of those being a county first and technically rarer in my home San Mateo than any of those others with at least 2 county records each. It's also fun that I've found pelagics like Ancient Murrelet and Buller's Sheartwater alongside the more terrestrial likes of Burrowing Owl, Lewis's Woodpecker, Lucy's Warbler, and Red Crossbill. So yeah, bike-bring around here is really good. I'm really hoping to fluff up my list this spring or summer with ~10-day loop to the Sierras and back, and I'm hoping to get my total towards 300 by year's end. That will only take a couple thousand miles of cumulative riding, so stay tuned.

California state view

County view

I am also hoping to join Bay Area bike-birders Josiah Clark and Rob Furrow on their annual spring bike Big Day in late-April. A recently-materialized trip to Honduras in the middle of that month might make that impossible, but I am going to do everything that I can to make it happen!

OK, with all that as backdrop, I want to discuss the recently materialized 5-Mile Radius (5MR). The idea of the 5MR is to outline a circle with a radius of 5 miles from your place of residence (or other point of your choosing should you live in an awful area for birding) with the hope that a small, well-defined, and high-localized geography will motivate at least some birding within it. For example, this is what mine would look like. If I wanted, I could shift this circle several miles southwest so as to include less bay and more mountains while still keeping my residence within it, for example.

I know at least some of you are asking, "Why would I want to restrict my biding to such a small area?" Well, I see at least two very important reasons one might want to give 5MR birding a chance. The first of these is that carbon emissions will be reduced versus always driving to farther flung places. While birding emissions aren't likely to be significant in the face of ever-increasing world petroleum consumption, we birders should at least think about modifying our collective driving behavior to minimize our environmental impact. Second, data collected in the 5MR are particular valuable as they are highly localized and specific and as such will greatly aid in local conservation efforts. One of the problems with birding data is that a lot of them come from just a few areas, or 'Hot Spots'. If everyone spent at least some time each week in his/her 5MR, we'd get a more even distribution of data than if everyone races to the same places to chase the same reported birds. Who knows? Maybe you'll find the next great migrant trap right in your own 5MR!

Pied-billed Grebe - Podilymbus podiceps

Canon 500mm f/4 IS + 1.4x III on EOS 5D Mark IV

1/1600 at f/7.1, ISO 800

I know that the 5MR flies in the face of the driving and associated no-holds-barred listing that motivates much of our birding behavior, but I think it is a really interesting idea, particularly when cross-promoted with the various forms of green birding (walking, running, biking etc). As no point in the 5MR is more than 5 linear miles from home, it would be very easy to bird most or all of it by bike or foot. I personally have an ~25MR that I bird almost exclusively by bike (it runs from SF to Pigeon Point or so). What time I spend outside that radius is usually photography-motivated, but I sneak in a bit of petroleum-powered birding on those occasions. So, and as per usual, I'm not advocating that everyone immediately give up his or her car, but I do think the 5MR offers the perfect opportunity to reevaluate at least some percentage of our birding behaviors. I must admit that I fly to several international birding destinations each year, so what I save on the bike I probably more than give back on the plane. Such is the cost of being human. Just something for me and everyone else to think about in this installment. 

Willet - Tringa semipalmata

Canon 500mm f/4 IS + 1.4x III on EOS 5D Mark IV

1/3200 at f/5.6, ISO 1600

Post #125 - California County Birding - By Bike!

I'm going to keep this short since I am prepping for an Ecuador trip that begins on Saturday! As I will be there through the end of the year, this will represent the last entry for 2017. Thanks for hanging in there with me through the third year of this blog. It's as much a personal birding journal as anything else, but hopefully some of you have found something interesting or entertaining to keep you coming back. Ecuador entries will materialize when I return, so please stay tuned for those. I should also, as I've done for the last two years, present my photographic highlights of the year, this being my most photographically productive ever. But for now, it's back to to the bicycle.

I last wrote about bike-birding two months ago, on October 9, just after I had added Dusky Warbler for San Mateo County bike bird #180. Since then I've added another 26 species to reach 206 for my home county, the most notable additions since last time being Red-footed Booby (2nd county record) and LeConte's Sparrow (1st county record), both in Half Moon Bay. Though I alluded to it in that last bike-birding post, I should state here that I have actually created a bike-specific eBird account for myself. I have had a ton of fun with it, most specifically using eBird's "Explore Data" feature to see what species I still need to grow my San Mateo bike-birding list. I use the data generated from that feature to plan my rides each week.

Additions to my San Mateo County Bike 

list since Dusky Warbler on Oct 9, 2017.

Red-Footed Booby, Half Moon Bay, CA

*This was taken from my kayak a few days

after I added the bird for my bike list.

As I have created a profile page for my bike-birding account, I was able to extract the following graphical data from it. This is presented in heat-map form where counties in which I have observed the most species are colored red; Those counties in which I have seen fewer receive correspondingly lighter colors, orange, for example.

It's pretty clear that I've focused on San Mateo, but I have ventured into neighboring counties a few times. For reference, it's 19 riding miles from my house to Lake Merced at the southern end of San Francisco County. Going the opposite direction, it's 17 riding miles to reach Palo Alto at the northeastern corner of Santa Clara County. What that means is that it's a non-trivial amount off riding (30-40 miles) just to reach and return from those neighboring counties. I plan to spend more time exploring San Francisco and Santa Clara Counties moving forward, particularly as the days lengthen and I can get more birding time for the same amount of riding. I have also discovered that I can legally ride over the Dumbarton Bridge to reach the extreme southwestern corner of Alameda County on the other side of the bay. That's ~23 miles each way, so that's 46 just to reach and return from Alameda. As I ride about 14 miles an hour, that's 3+ hours of cranking. So, I gotta make that ride count!

What I hope this shows is just how much more challenging - and in my admittedly isolated, minority opinion - interesting local/county listing becomes when the bicycle is substituted for the car. I have basically given up local birding in the car as it is no longer satisfying. I really like the physical challenge that the bike presents, and I actually enjoy the increased logistics that come along with it. Today I went to Half Moon Bay (32 miles, 2000 feet of vertical climbing for the round trip) to try for Orchard Oriole and missed. I hardly cared though as I spent no money on gas, burned no fossil fuels, and got a great workout anyway.

Bike-birding field trip I led at Laguna Atascosa NWR as 

part of the Rio Grande Birding Festival this November

I'm not saying that we should all perpetually abandon cars in favor of bikes. Hell, I drove 3.5 hours to Santa Barbara two weeks ago to tick a Garganey that may or may not count towards my ABA list, and I almost always drive when I'm hauling my photography gear to and from shooting locations. But I do think that we birders should rethink the relative weight we place on local/county lists as generated through petroleum-powered means, particularly as much of that local/county birding can be done by bike instead. I totally understand that the bike isn't for everyone, but it should be possible for the community to deploy it more than the very little that we do now. It's a low-cost, healthy, environmentally-friendly, and challenging alternative to driving. It's also a hellava lot more satisfying and immeasurably more interesting than just sitting behind the wheel. But that's me. I curious what others think.

Post #119 - Fall Bay Area bike-birding, including DUSKY WARBLER! And Bike-Bird Photography too!

I moved from Los Angeles to San Mateo in May of this year. At that time, I had a partially torn calf muscle and did not do any biking for the first month that I was here. Once June rolled around my leg was well enough to do some local bike-birding, mostly along the flat shores of the San Francisco Bay right out the back of my apartment. My leg has since fully healed, and I have been getting correspondingly more adventurous as the summer has transitioned into fall and the birding has picked-up. Right now, I shoot for one 40- to 50-mile ride each week and whatever shorter jaunts along the bayshore time permits. I've got my last three pelagic trips of the fall this weekend, so once those shut down I'll have a bit more time to dedicate to terrestrial bike-birding.

Seawatching from Moss Beach!

I had a particularly good ride last week, one that took me first over the mountains to Moss Beach. From that vantage I was able to add pelagic species such as Sooty, Pink-footed, and Buller's Shearwaters, 3 birds not traditionally associated with bike-birding. I also had Golden-crowned Kinglet, Fox Sparrow, Lincoln's Sparrow, and White-throated Sparrow, all of which were county bike-birds for me. Later, I rode back through Half Moon Bay where I added Laughing Gull, a nice bird this far north, and another pelagic bird, Parasitic Jaeger. From there is was a bit further south to grab Common Gallinule before again climbing the mountains to return home.

A stop at the beach in Half Moon Bay

Map of my ride.

54 miles, 2500 feet of climbing.

This past weekend was particularly exciting as a Dusky Warbler was found just a mile up the bayshore from my apartment. I jumped on my bike as soon as I received word of the bird and easily bagged it for my San Mateo County Bike List. Dusky Warbler was actually a bike lifer as it was not one of the 618 that I found during my bicycle Big Year in 2014. So that was really cool. It was my first bike-lifer since that effort. if this sounds familiar, that's because Roger Schoedl and I found a Dusky Warbler in Huntington Beach last year. Amazingly, we found that bird on October 8, 2016 and this bird appeared on October 8, 2017!

Dusky Warbler record shots

So, with the addition of that Old World warbler and Merlin on that same morning, I've now pushed my San Mateo County bike list to 180 species (most recent additions at end of post). All of those were collected on out-and-back efforts starting and ending at my home, so zero use of fuel at any point. Minus occasional car-chases for would-be ABA lifers and driving to pelagic trips, I've basically abandoned the car for purely birding purposes. I still use it for photography as that pastime often requires me to lug a lot of gear to wherever I'm going, often before the sun rises. I have, however, found a couple of photographically productive spots on the bayshore to which I can easily ride my bike. So, in that respect I guess I'm trying to make bike bird photography 'a thing' now as well. I'm pretty happy with the results so far, but you can judge for yourself. Those of you paying attention to the shooting info might notice that I've recently added the 5D Mark IV to my arsenal. I'll write more about it at some point, but I'll say now that I'm totally in love with it.

AGAIN, ALL OF THESE WERE TAKEN 

USING MY BIKE - NO CAR!

CLICK ON PHOTOS FOR LARGER, 

HIGHER RESOLUTION VIEWS!

Black-bellied Plover - Pluvialis squatarola

Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO II + 1.4x III on EOS 5D Mark IV

1/4000 at f/5.6, ISO 1250

Willet - Tringa semipalmata

Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO II + 1.4x III on EOS 5D Mark IV

1/5000 at f/5.6, ISO 800

Marbled Godwit - Limosa fedoa

Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO II + 2x III on EOS 5D Mark IV

1/3200 at f/8, ISO 1600

Marbled Godwit - Limosa fedoa

Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO II + 1.4x III on EOS 5D Mark IV

1/5000 at f/5.6, ISO 800

Most recent additions to San Mateo County Bike List

OK, that's it for now. There's a lot of stuff in this post, and I hope at least some of it inspires at least a few of you to ditch the car for a day and try out the bike instead. It's way more fun and rewarding than driving everywhere!

Post #114 - Bike-chasing California's most famous seabird......

This is a Northern Gannet. It is a large seabird that nests colonially in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. On the map below, nesting colonies are shown as green dots, and the wintering range is shown in aqua. They are unique among boobies (Sulidae) because they prefer high, northern latitudes to more tropical climes. Though it's tough to tell from this photo, they are quite large; they average 3 feet in length, and they sport a wingspan of nearly 6 feet. They subsist entirely on fish and such, and they are well-known for their arial acrobatics as they plunge into the ocean in pursuit of prey.

Northern Gannet - Morus bassanus

Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve, Newfoundland, Canada

Canon 400mm f/5.6 on EOS 1D Mark IV

1/1600 at f/8, ISO 400

Northern Gannet range

So, why the heck am I writing about an Atlantic seabird in a post about California?!??! Well, in April of 2012 a Northern Gannet appeared on the Farallon Islands, 30 miles west of San Francisco (please see my recent post on the Farallons). Birders were understandably shocked by the first Pacific record of Northern Gannet but were even more surprised by how long the wayward bird stayed on the Farallons - 2 full years! The bird finally disappeared in March of 2014 only to reappear on Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay just two weeks later. It spent that spring and part of the summer in the bay before returning to its more familiar Farallon haunts. Since then, it has bounced between points on those islands, SF Bay, and points along the coast of San Mateo County. The bird generally spends a few months in a particular area before moving elsewhere for an equivalent length of time, and it is occasionally seen from seawatches and on pelagic trips as it transits between its preferred spots. I first saw this bird in Half Moon Bay in February of this year when I came to SF to look for an apartment. At that point, it had been in the Bay Area for nearly 5 years. 

Northern Gannet sightings

April 2012 - August 2017

Since I moved to San Mateo in May, sightings of the bird have been very thin; There was only 1 summer observation, that being on the Farallons on July 17. So, when the bird recently reappeared at Devil's Slide just south of Pacifica on August 2nd, I jumped at the prospect to add the bird to my slowly growing San Mateo County bike-only birdlist. I was in Arizona when the bird was rediscovered, so my first attempt at the bird had to wait a while and ultimately resulted in a 38-mile, round-trip miss; 2,700 feet of climbing to get over the coast range and back made that strike-out hurt even worse.

The gannet has frequented the whitish rock 

outcropping, left of center. Pretty cool that I can

bike to this from my apartment!

Undaunted by failure, I yesterday made a second attempt at the bird and was successful! I spotted the bird among a HUGE feeding frenzy of birds at least a mile from shore. I am familiar with this species from my time in the east, so making the ID at such a distance was very easy. It wasn't doing much, just floating around, but it shortly took off and flew into the rock where it has been seen recently by other birders.

This was taken through my Zeiss Gavia 85 at 60x.

I wish I would show you how many birds 

were to the right of this - thousands!

After that success, I headed south along the coast to do a bit of birding at Half Moon Bay. I headed for the harbor, set up my scope, and surprisingly saw a Northern Gannet sitting on the aptly named Sail Rock 400 yards from shore. Incredibly, the gannet had followed me 10 miles south, returning to a roost it had in the past used though not for the previous 6 months. I thought the whole thing was really fortuitous. 

The gannet in Half Moon Bay, 40 minutes later

My successful gannet chase, complete

with Half Moon Bay extension - 47 miles.

So, of the 130 or so birds species that I've managed to find in San Mateo County using just my bike, this Northern Gannet is by far the best quality bird. Chasing rarities on a bicycle is a horribly inefficient process, but I hope to defy those long odds as I do more of this sort of thing in the future. Finding birds from the bike in an incredibly rewarding feeling, and, regardless of the outcome, I'm staying in good shape. 

It's really cool that this bird has survived and taken up what appears to be permanent residence in Northern California. We often think of wayward rarities as disoriented or weak, and, though that might have been the case when he first appeared, he seems to be doing just fine today. Since he's so large and conspicuous, he's easy to find if he's around. It's because of this visibility that we've been able to track his movements during his California vacation-turned-staycation. 

Lastly, and since this was the week of the great solar eclipse, I'll leave you with the following photo. It's a bit of a departure from my usual style, being as much digital art as photograph. The subject bird was backlit by the setting sun, and I exposed the scene so as to correctly expose the edge of the bird but underexpose everything else. I simply knocked down what few details did come through in post-production to heighten the halo, or eclipse, effect. I hope you like it.....

Great Egret - Ardea alba

Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO II + 1.4x III on EOS 1D Mark IV

1/5000 at f/5.6, ISO 400

Handheld from kayak

Post #111 - Bay Area bird chasing - bicycle style! Bonus shorebird photos.....

Really fast before we get started! I just wrote an article on Guatemala for the Nature Travel Network. All of the photos in the accompanying photo gallery are my own. Please check it out, especially if you're thinking about a trip to that wonderful country! I'm happy to field questions if you have any. OK, now for the main event......

It's been roughly two months since Sonia and I moved from Norwalk/LA to San Mateo/SF, and I am thoroughly impressed with the bike-birding prospects so far! I didn't do any bike-birding in the Southern California sprawl, and a badly strained calf muscle kept me sidelined for the first few weeks that I was in the Bay Area. Needless to say, I wasn't in the best shape when I finally resumed bike last month, but I've since built up my fitness exploring the bayshore. I now regularly patrol a length of shoreline that runs from San Francisco Airport southeast towards Redwood City. Coyote Point just behind my apartment has proven particularly productive, and I imagine that the entire bayshore will only get better as fall and winter approach.

My local stretch of SF Bay shoreline

As I've always been one for setting goals, my most immediate intent is to push Bay Area bike list north of 200 species. I am currently at 112 for San Mateo County, so I've got a long way to go. Summer is the slowest birding season in the Bay Area, but I fully expect to reach that plateau once fall migration commences. I can hear Josiah Clark and Rob Furrow laughing right now. Those two ironmen routinely tally 180+ species on their annual bicycle Big Day in April! I'm still learning the area and getting into shape, but I hope to be able to keep up with those guys in a few months. How far beyond 200 I can can reach is yet to be seen, but the my photography interest will certainly limit my bike-birding to some degree as the two are usually mutually exclusive. That being said, I have biked my rig to Coyote Point on a few occasions, so there's at least some hope of integrating the two passions!

Long-billed Curlew - Numenius americanus

Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO II + 1.4x III on EOS 1D Mark IV

1/2500 at f/5.6, ISO 800

To reach 200 species, I'll certainly have to do some amount of chasing. That process started this past weekend as I made my inaugural trip over the mountains to the coast to chase a continuing Willow Flycatcher at Burleigh Murray Ranch State Park. I made it to within a mile of the bird when Alvaro Jaramillo called me with news of his Wedge-tailed Shearwater just of Miramar Beach in Half Moon Bay. I immediately abandoned the flycatcher in favor of the shearwater. That chase was not to be though as 3 hours of scanning produced exactly zero shearwaters of any sort. I really wanted that bird. It would have been an amazing bike list addition. It's not too often I can get a bike lifer after the 618 species I rang up in 2014. Oh, and the flycatcher? I rode back to Burleigh Murray and missed that too. Sweet......

My route from my apartment to the beach and back

Elevation profile of my ride

The ride home over the mountains was hard and hot but not as disappointing as many might think. The real beauty of the bike is that the rider extracts value even when the sought birds are missed. I got some much needed exercise, and I had a great day exploring the coast. I did add 16 new birds (#'s 93-108) to my bike list (Heermann's Gull, Sanderling, Common Murre etc), so I did make some progress towards my goal of 200. Equally important, I burned zero gas which means zero (well almost, my body put out some CO2) emissions and zero dollars spent on transportation. I even found what I though would be a great photo spot to which I returned the following morning - in the car - to shoot. I was not disappointed!

Marbled Godwit - Limosa fedoa

Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO II on EOS 7D2

1/2500 at f/4, ISO 400

Willet (western) - Tringa semipalmata

Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO II on EOS 7D2

1/3200 at f/4, ISO 400

If you like these photos, there are many more at my official photography website, or at my Instagram account!