Bird watching
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The Urban Birder
David Lindo visits San Francisco on the final leg of his US road trip, searching for rarities and fighting off illness
M
y friends would tell you that I do not care much for twitching these days. Even rarities showing up in London, my home city, barely raise an urge. If anything, news of a biggie normally has me scurrying down to my local patch to see if I can find a hitherto undiscovered representative of the same species there. Indeed, I now liken hardcore twitching to being like a series of bad one-night stands. You get all excited about seeing a bird and when (or if) you get to see the frightened thing, it’s never as good as you imagined and you leave feeling cold and empty. I felt cold and empty when I stepped off the plane into the west coast sunshine of Oakland, the neighbouring city to San Francisco. I was still sick from the bug I had caught in Tucson several weeks earlier and what was more, I was sporting a lovely pair of bloodshot eyes. Yeah, I was on top form. Meeting me was a member of the Outdoor Afros. No, I hadn’t secretly become a militant Black Panther. Rather, I was meeting a group whose aim was to get Afro Americans out in the wilderness to experience nature. They, along with the Golden Gate Audubon Society, had jointly invited me over for a few days to speak and to be taken urban birding. I opened my talk the following night, by stating that I could never join the Outdoor Afros. The looks of utter shock soon turned to raucous laughter when I pointed at my bald head, exclaiming that it was too late for me! The next morning I was met by Golden Gate Audubon members Eddie Bartley and Noreen Weeden, who had volunteered to take me around the city. They outlined the itinerary for the day, which included seeing some of the local expected birds, plus visiting a very visible occupied Great Horned Owl nest. Many of the species they mentioned I was already familiar with, further south in Los Angeles, but the promise of guaranteed Chestnut-backed Chickadee had my mouth watering. Almost as a throwaway comment, they casually mentioned that the Bay Area was home to the endangered obsoletus race of the Clapper Rail. The twitcher in me kicked in and soon plans were changed and we were eventually walking the boardwalks, scanning the wetlands of Martin Luther King Jr Shoreline Park, right next to Oakland Airport. The park was just a remnant of the extensive marshlands that used to predominate the Bay Area. More than 90% of that habitat has now been lost under concrete. We only had 30 minutes at this site, due to the tight schedule, so the heat was on. American Avocets,
Black-necked Stilts and Slavonian Grebes all performed and we even found a vagrant Tropical Kingbird – all were good, but my time was running out. Suddenly, I noticed a distant shape swimming across a small patch of open water. It was a Clapper Rail. I punched the air – all very American. Then Noreen pointed to a spot in the reeds five feet from us. It was another Clapper Rail, foraging in the open, totally oblivious to us. It looked like a Water Rail on steroids. I was elated! My twitching urge quenched, we resumed with our planned day, visiting some of the birding hotspots within San Francisco itself: a city incidentally, that I absolutely loved. Corona Heights Park was the most urban spot we visited. Sited on a hilltop, this small, wooded patch afforded brilliant views of the cityscape. It also provided me with my first ever Chestnut-backed Chickadee. It was while I was watching the chickadee that someone mentioned the presence of a Varied Thrush at the Golden Gate Park, on the western edge of the city. Varied Thrush is a bird I have dreamed about seeing for many years. A mix of black, white, bluey grey and vibrant red, this thrush is a striking bird. However, they can be skulkers and extremely hard to see. At my insistence, we downed tools and rushed over to the park to try to find a bird that was last seen three weeks ago. Surely, the odds were stacked against me? Golden Gate Park was huge, covering some 1,000 acres with apparently one million trees. Eddie and Noreen took me to the marshy wooded area where the thrush was last seen and I began to search. I was determined to find this bird, and heavily deployed ‘The Force’ in an attempt to use more than just my sight and hearing. We were nearing the end of the trail, and I was about to concede defeat, when I was aware of movement in a nearby tree. I waited for what seemed like an everlasting five minutes, until I suddenly saw a male Varied Thrush standing stock still on a branch staring back at me. I began to quiver with excitement. It was then joined by six others – I had found a flock of them! Back in London, still ill, my doctor was surprised I had not contracted pneumonia. I was just jubilant that I had a blast and lasted the duration of my impromptu American birding odyssey. BEST SITE: Martin Luther King Jr Shoreline Park CITY LIST: c350 Many thanks to Rue Mapp, The Outdoor Afros outdoorafro.com, Noreen Weeden and Eddie Bartley, goldengateaudubon.org birdwatching.co.uk 17