All,

I led my Palo Alto Adult School class to Mitchell Canyon on the north
side of Mount Diablo this morning. There were several birding groups
there today, along with a long train of horses. It was a little
breezy, which may have affected our lower-than-usual selection of
birds. Still, we had a wonderful visit, despite the missed species
such as Olive-sided Flycatcher, Bullock's Oriole, Lazuli Bunting or
Cassin's Vireo....

We didn't hike in as far as we have in the past because we got side
tracked by a singing MACGILLIVRAY'S WARBLER and BLUE-GRAY
GNATCATCHER about 100 yards up the White Canyon Trail. Also in this
area was found COSTA'S HUMMINGBIRD. We left a few folks at the bench
by the main trail, and they too found a MACGILLIVRAY'S WARBLER.

The large oak at the junction of the two trails was literally filled
with several WARBLING VIREOS, Warblers, including BLACK-THROATED
GRAY, HERMIT, TOWNSEND'S, NASHVILLE, ORANGE-CROWNED, and WILSON'S. We
were also lucky with HAMMOND'S FLYCATCHERS which were located in
several spots along the main Mitchell Canyon Fire Trail, near enough
to the more numerous PACIFIC-SLOPE FLYCATCHERS for easy comparison.
ASH-THROATED FLYCATCHERS were conspicuous during our walk, as were
HOUSE WRENS. Over the quarry we spotted a number of VIOLET-GREEN,
CLIFF and NORTHERN ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOWS foraging alongside WHITE-
THROATED SWIFTS. Only two WESTERN TANAGERS were seen by our group,
and they were in the parking lot before everyone had arrived.

One soaring GOLDEN EAGLE was seen near our turnaround point a few
hundred yards beyond the White Canyon junction.

. . .

Matthew Dodder
Mountain View, CA
http://www.birdguy.net
http://www.zazzle.com/mdodder