Birds of Winter

I noticed some bird species I hadn’t seen for a while during my dawn dog walk this morning. It’s the fall migration, and we have a storm system coming through (chance of thunderstorms tonight), so they’re probably traveling ahead of the turbulent weather.

 It was really windy last night, loud gusts through the trees and rattling the house. I enjoy lying in bed, listening to a storm. As is his habit for the last year or so, Ernie rousted me to take him outside around 3 AM. It’s been hot for the last few weeks here, so stepping outside with him in a bathrobe I definitely caught a few gusts. Clear overhead, I saw Orion over our house. Oddly, the wind stopped very abruptly right before dawn, and it became quite still.

Had I brought my camera during our walk, I’d have taken pictures of the sunrise over the east bay hills; a rim of clouds illuminated along the ridgeline down about Hayward and Fremont. First just a burst of yellow piercing the clouds, then the whole line gradually catching the yellow, pink, puce, and orange light.

As quiet as the shoreline is in summer, we ‘ve had a lot of coot come through recently. And today I saw my first scoter:

They come in off the ocean to winter on the bay. This weekend I noticed a whole raft of ruddy ducks, but they seem to have moved on, and I’m also seeing a lot of grebes. No loons yet.

A couple weekends ago the missus called me out to our back porch, where she had seen a flash of yellow in the pittosporum tree next to the deck. Turns out he was a townsend’s warbler passing through. I hope he enjoyed a nice respite during his travels here!