This morning I met up with Scott Baron, a Pennsylvania birder visiting the Bay Area, at Arrowhead Marsh in Oakland. The RIDGWAY'S RAILS were really putting on a show, stumping around on the mud at low

It was a beautiful, quiet cloudy fall day at Lake Merritt, the kind of California fall day I'd almost forgotten could exist anymore after spending the last two years in Nebraska. Birds were everywhere

I made my first visit of the season to Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro today. Access is much curtailed; much of the hilltop and area overlooking the landfill, including the trail leading

I just had what might have been a Eurasian accipiter circling over my Oakland neighborhood. If I'd have remembered to empty my memory card earlier today I would have nailed it, but my card was full an

Migrants continue to be many but with poor diversity in the East Bay. Probably the oddest bird this morning at Lake Merritt was a nervous BAND-TAILED PIGEON flying between treetops in the community/bo

This morning I stopped by the tiny, shady poplar grove behind the Chevy's in Emeryville (on Access Rd., at the "base" of the Emeryville Marina peninsula). The first bird I heard, then saw, was a first

This afternoon, among probably thousands of common shorebirds, there was a juvenile (or perhaps nonbreeding adult) RUDDY TURNSTONE at Elsie Roemer Bird Sanctuary in Alameda. Bird numbers here have bee

Has the tern been photographed yet? Noah

Seems like a lot of Wandering Tattlers are getting reported right now all up and down our great state of California, and this week I've seen two reports of tattlers observed on flat sand or mud habita

This afternoon I butterflied Crown Beach, where the most interesting encounter was not a butterfly but an unseen apparent Empidonax flycatcher, making "Whit!" calls in the fenced brushy junkyard(?) ar

To me, it seems like it would be quite a stretch to perceive a Poorwill as looking like a Tropical Kingbird... I'm still guessing this was some sort of flycatcher. Being so far out of range, it could

Hi everyone. When I was home in the Bay Area last Sunday, I photographed a meadowlark at Ferry Point (Miller-Knox Regional Shoreline in Pt. Richmond) that shows some characteristics of Eastern Meadowl

I spent much of the day today gulling at Miller-Knox Shoreline (at Point Richmond), at the herring run, where there were slightly fewer gulls than yesterday, but still thousands. A really great flock.

This looks like a 1st-fall Yellow Warbler to me. The patterned wing (pale edgings and dark centers on the greater coverts creating a ghost of a pale wing-bar or wing-panel) I think is a Yellow charact

Does anybody know what direction the winds were coming from during most of today (7/19)? The South Valley had some east winds today and I'm wondering if the same happened here in the Bay Area (which c

Hi everyone. A bit off-topic but hopefully good info for anyone who's into butterflying: The hot weather has brought an incursion of stray inland butterflies into Oakland, and presumably other bayside

Hi everyone. A couple hours after my Anhinga-like drive-by sighting at Don Edwards, I returned and slowly drove Marshlands Road (the frontage road just south of Dumbarton), scanning for anything that

Just saw what looked like a cormorant but appeared to have a VERY long tail in flight in Don Edwards, while driving on Dumbarton Bridge. I only saw it for a few seconds from a moving car, so IT COULD

Albert Linkowski and I birded in the rain today hoping for a fallout, and we were successful at Ellis Lake Park in Concord. All the eucalyptus and nearby trees around the edge of the lake were full of

I have been kindly reminded by my gulling buddy that it would be helpful if I mentioned why these birds are Vega and potentially Slaty-backed Gulls, instead of just saying they are and expecting you a