Alameda Creek / Quarry Lakes Little Blue Heron August 2009

A great day. Started out meeting up with some good friends for brunch in Redwood City - nice little restaurant, one of those that you'd probably describe as a hidden gem. Anyway, the two families met up and enjoyed some good food. One of those cases where time flies really quickly - by the time you've got the kids sorted out and ordered, it's time to go. Generally speaking I take my queue from the little fellow. He'd got to the point where sitting at the table wasn't enough for him and he wanted to play with his cars on the floor. Now, I'm not a waiter and would probably not make a good one, but one thing I can guess is that it's probably a hard enough job balancing the plates to carry them in and out of the kitchen without having to navigate an obstacle course of toy cars along the way. So we parted company and headed off to Freemont.

I'd read some reports of a Little Blue Heron being spotted in Alameda Creek. I have to say, I owe a lot of thanks to the report that came out on the East Bay bird list the day before that described the bird's location as between Mission Blvd and Old Canyon Road. I really wasn't expecting to find it, but it was there in exactly the location described. If I hadn't have read this I'd have gone to the creek by Quarry Lakes and not seen the bird. There was a lot of fishing activity going on with the heron, egrets and a couple of common mergansers. We did actually go to the Quarry Lakes location as well. Best I can tell, the birds photographed are:

• Black Phoebe
• California Towhee
• Canada Goose
• Common Merganser
• Forster's Tern
• Great Egret
• House Finch
• Little Blue Heron
• Mallard
• Snowy Egret
• Turkey Vulture
• Western Gull

One thing I will come back to is the little foghorn that accompanies me on these trips. Karen was applying suncream to William and I decided to scoot off ahead. I saw the little blue heron more or less straight the way and was making my way to it. I realized I wouldn't make it before Karen and William got to me, so I beckoned to them with a scowling face (just to add to the seriousness of my gesture) to get them to stay where they were. I then went ahead to get to the bird to take some pictures. During this time, people came by on bicycles and a dog was let out on the far bank that was growling and barking. None of this seemed to bother the heron. I thought it would be good if I could get a couple of pictures of the bird taking off, so I beckoned Karen and William to join me. Sure enough, as soon as they got to me, the heron took flight. Don't know what it is - clearly snarling rabid dogs are nothing to worry about, but a three year old kid - not hanging around to see what that does. The bird moved downstream and across to the far bank - we left it alone after that (not that we were really interacting with it in the first place other than to take some pictures from the footpath).

 

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