Trip Reports

Early birders assembling for the Christmas Eve edition of the walk saw two of the big white-headed gulls – one Western (black wingtips) and the other Glaucous-winged (gray and white wingtips) engaging in what looked like a  serious fight in the water in front of the nature center – no blood, but solid beak grips at the wing-to-shoulder joint and much flapping effort to push each other underwater. You don’t notice how big those gulls’ beaks are until they get them gnashed in all the way through the gape, which runs well back behind the eyes. Flap! Splash! Plop! Oh – there’s one broken away… nope, here it comes back, chomp! Flap! Splash! You tired yet? Yeah, this is gettin’ old…. So off they swam, side by side, one of them twirling a leaf in its beak.

What was that all about? Who knows? It wasn’t anything anyone watching had ever seen before. The birds were of what humans regard as different species, but the big white-headed gulls don’t seem to care about that – so perhaps it was a couple getting acquainted.

And beyond that, it was still quite a morning. We saw the Western Bluebird flock again, apparently thoroughly settled at the lake – a new species there, first glimpsed in 2013, then seen raising a family this past spring. The almost-resident Red-tailed Hawk (a beautiful dark-morph bird) was sitting in one of the cormorant nests on the island, looking for all the world like a hook-billed mama hen – and not bothering the cormorants at all, as they’re all out of the nest (and either sitting on the floats or fishing in the lake). Two female Hooded Mergansers were swimming between the islands, their red-brown crests almost glowing in the gray light, along with the usual round of scaup and goldeneyes and coots and Canvasbacks and Ruddy Ducks and large and small grebes – 45 species all told.

But no Tufted Duck; he hasn’t been seen at all this year – even on the Christmas Bird Count, for the first time in what someone said was 20 years, and at least half a dozen to my certain knowledge. Even without him, though, and with the wind rising sharply toward the end of the morning, it was another good day at Lake Merritt, where when you come right down to it, every day you don’t fall in is a good day….…

Our fourth Wednesday walk moved to the 3rd Wednesday, as the leaders and many probable participants had plans for the regular date, and people did manage to find us despite the first-ever change in the schedule. The crew of 13 birders, one here from Florida, began by beating feet for the El Embarcadero end of the lake, where the Tufted Duck was in residence and even condescended to pull his beak out of his back feathers so we could get a proper look. He’s hard to spot at this time of year as his black pony-tail is only about half grown and his wings are more gray than white, but his back is as black as ever.  A female Tufted Duck has been reported here this year – for the first time in a decade – but we couldn’t find her, despite a lot of looking at brown ducks in the hope of seeing a small tuft and a mostly brown face.

We got good looks at several other rarities, too. A Barrow’s Goldeneye  was slumming down in the area below the children’s playground instead of sticking with others of his kind at the 12th Street end of the lake, and we saw a Hermit Thrush  in the garden and a Red-breasted Sapsucker across the street from it.

All the winter regulars were here, both on the lake and in the garden, and Hank-the-rescue-bird still had one White Pelican friend to keep him company. All told, except for a bit of a chill when the sun ducked behind one of the numerous clouds, it was another very good day at Lake Merritt, where every day is a good day….

The birding highlight of the day were (1) Hooded Merganser at Pixley Pond: we were treated to a handsome male and 2 female types. (2) American Pipit  spotted by one of our participants along the levee beside San Clemente Drive near the southern most pond. (3) Lesser Yellowlegs on Corte Madera Creek . We had seen Greater Yellowlegs earlier on the Marsh and the Creek wetlands. This bird had a shorter, straighter, thinner bill, and then a Black-necked Stilt joined it and the smaller size clinched the id.…

Eight of us braved the cold and were rewarded by viewing the Clapper Rail and a Red-Throated Loon among 57 species heard or seen. All of the seasonal wetlands from Garretson Point to the area near the Swan Way entrance were full of water and birds. 

The December fourth-Wednesday Golden Gate Bird Alliance walk drew six intrepid birders – joining the two leaders for one of the best walks of the year, despite the prediction of rain. It did rain, too, but it was also sunny by turns, and the lake birds don’t care about the weather.

We spotted the Tufted Duck – or at least *a* Tufted Duck; this one seemed to be a young male, with only mostly white sides to go with his black back and the merest whisper of a tuft, while earlier reports had described a bird with a solid pony-tail on his head. On the way were two or three Mew Gulls – the rarely seen visitors that make the Ring-Billed Gulls (normally the smallest of the gulls at the lake) look big and burly. We saw six Common Mergansers, which are usually not common at all, including two males all dressed up for the holidays with white backs, green heads, and red beaks. And a Forster’s Tern was showing off a fine set of red legs on the floats, near a lone lorn Double-Crested Cormorant that apparently hadn’t noticed that all the cormorantish brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts had left the lake for the season.

Sadly, we encountered a group of visitors to the lake fishing a dead Brown Pelican out of the water, and one of them explained that it had starved to death because the water was so polluted it killed the fish. We pointed out the thriving ecosystem and said the lake is remarkably clean for a city-bound body of water, and suggested that the young bird might well have dived into shallow water and broken its neck – Brown Pelicans feed by dropping like bombs from twenty or thirty feet up, and large areas of the lake are little more than a pelican body-length deep. Others had by that point placed the bird in a trash container, so we parted in gentle disagreement on that point, and much shared affection for the lake.…