Bird Nerding, Plus Reptiles

I'm at the tail-end of a week off, feeling more or less refreshed and ready to head back to work. This reminds me of a recent article I read that suggests that the optimal number of work days per week for someone my age is three. It's a good thing that I don't really consider my job work. That said, it is a time commitment, which in some ways amounts to the same thing.

I spent the week of walking near the shores of the South Bay, plus one day trip down to Pinnacles National Park with Jeanine. The focus of these jaunts was photographing birds, and I managed to spot seven species I hadn't yet seen in the wild, and get better photographs of a few others.

First was a Redhead, hanging out with some Mallards at Sunnyvale Baylands.

Second was a Common Gallinule, slopping through the mud at Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

Close on the heels of this sighting were birds three and four, the Cinnamon Teal and the Blue-winged Teal, conveniently hanging out together.

Number five was a Surf Scoter, who didn't cooperate well enough for me to get an acceptable photo. Here's an unacceptable one:

Number six was an American Pipit, somewhere between Shoreline Park in Mountain View and Palo Alto Baylands.

Last, and certainly not least, was a bird I've been wanting to see in the wild since I was a kid, the California Condor. Seeing one was the main reason we went to Pinnacles, with is a drive of about an hour and a half each way. Add to that a six mile hike with around 1500 feet elevation gain, and it became a bit of an epic quest. On the way up the hill, we noticed that the reptiles were out. In mid-February, one doesn't expect temperatures in the seventies and basking reptiles, but we saw three species: Western Fence Lizard, Western Side-blotched Lizard, and Pacific Gopher snake.

After this, we briefly talked with a hiker who said that he'd been hiking the Pinnacles for 20 years and had never seen a Condor. Around half an hour after that, we saw two Condors. I guess Mr. Hiker doesn't often look up. Most Condors have numbered tags affixed to their wings, making them easy to spot when they're around. Our first encounter was with number 868, who was gliding with (and dwarfing) several Turkey Vultures. A little later on, we were repeatedly circled by number 340, who I found out later on actually has a given name, Kun-Wac-Shun (meaning Thunder and Lightning). He was named by Chief Nelson Wallulutem of the Wasco tribe, from the Columbia River region. More information is available here.

I remember being a kid and learning that there were only 27 California Condors left in the world. I think the information might have come to me by way of an endangered species coloring book. It is heartening to know that as of 2018, there were 488 of them, with 312 in the wild. They are still vulnerable to human factors like lead poisoning (after all, over 1000 chicks have been born since conservation efforts began, but fewer than half that many are currently alive), although a California law banning lead bullets went into effect last year. As is always the case, conservationists have to work all that much harder to compensate for the people who can't be bothered.