Date: 1/1/26 8:36 pm From: Zac Denning via groups.io <zdenning1...> Subject: Re: [EBB-Sightings] A Year of Alameda Birding: 2025
Ed,
Your big year is truly an accomplishment. It’s impressive by any measure,
but especially for someone who started relatively recently!
But more than the total, I appreciate the thoughtful approach you bring to
birding; like you’re focused on enjoying the birds (plus their ecology and
surroundings), and not only on the number. The number is impressive, but
the approach is what counts most in my book.
Speaking of books, we’ll all look forward to the latest book when it’s out.
Congratulations,
Zac Denning
On Thu, Jan 1, 2026 at 9:01 AM Ed Yong via groups.io <edyong209=
<gmail.com...> wrote:
> Happy new year, everyone.
>
>
>
> 2025 was a deeply troubled year, but birding, as always, provided a salve.
> Some of you know that I moved to the Bay Area in 2023, feel deeply into
> birding that year, and spent 2024 trying to see as many birds as I could in
> my home county of Alameda. I initially figured that in 2025, I’d be more
> limited in my ability to bird locally because I had a book to write and a
> lot of travel to do. But as it happened, I successfully finished the book
> (out spring ‘27) and somehow managed to find *a lot* of birds—289 in
> total.
>
>
>
> The full list is at the bottom of this email and *here’s a Google Drive
> folder
> <https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/145YUy-DKe-HMeTebf6XjuXptjr402iiR?usp=sharing>* > with photos or recordings of almost every species. (Fair warning: they vary *wildly
> *in quality.)
>
>
>
> Chasing birds is just one of many ways of birding, and a silly and
> sometimes maddening game—but also an extremely fun and rewarding one. And
> for a baby birder, it’s an absolutely phenomenal learning experience. It
> forces you to pore over the minutiae of identification, to practice
> ear-birding, to understand and predict bird behavior, to explore a wide
> variety of hotspots and habitats, to pay close attention to seasonal and
> tidal cycles, to plug yourself into the local community both human and
> non-human, to learn to differentiate solid reports from dubious ones, and,
> above all else, to spend lots of hours in the field. And after spending
> 2024 doing all of the above, 2025 felt richer, easier, and more joyful. I
> felt like I had a substantially better understanding of both the land and
> the birds, and that I was started to *recognize *the birds instead of
> just *identifying* them.
>
>
>
> 2025 was also an *amazing* year for Alameda. We had multiple sightings of
> some great migrants, including common terns, pectoral and solitary
> sandpipers, chestnut-sided and palm warblers, Pacific golden-plovers,
> lesser black-backed gulls, clay-colored and Brewer’s sparrows, Ross’s
> geese, and apparently three separate black-chinned hummingbirds at
> Creekside. From mid-October, fall migration delivered a two-month streak of
> absolute bangers, including a sharp-tailed sandpiper seen at close range in
> perfect light, a Leach’s storm-petrel viewed from shore, a red-naped
> sapsucker and a bar-tailed godwit (yay!) who both hung around for ages, a
> black-throated green warbler in Estuary Park of all places, a yellow-billed
> loon who turned Crab Cove into Crabless Cove, a rock sandpiper who led to
> calls to surveyors’ offices, and a green-tailed towhee who adopted a pink
> laundry basket. And let’s not forget the big trend of 2025, which was birds
> showing up in the *worst* possible habitats. Consider the American dipper
> who spent an evening at the tiniest creek at Lake Temescal, the northern
> waterthrush of Middle Harbor who hung out next to a decaying seal carcass,
> the Townsend’s solitaire at MLK who didn’t get the memo about junipers and
> mountains, and the Cocos booby who decided to land in the middle of the
> lawn in Crab Cove. The birds were all over the place. So, apparently, was I.
>
>
>
> Here are the headlines, with all numbers referring to species totals:
>
>
>
> - *Total Alameda bird count: *289, beating my total from last year by
> 9.
> - *New county birds: *20
> - *Lifers: *7 (Cocos booby, Townsend’s solitaire, long-eared owl,
> Baird’s sandpiper, Leach’s storm-petrel, tundra swan, rock sandpiper, and
> last year’s nemesis, the black rail)
> - *Birds documented with either photos or recordings: *286, which was
> everything except parasitic jaeger (too far and fast), scaly-breasted munia
> (flyover, tho technically I have a rubbish recording with one call), and
> pigeon guillemot (no battery in camera, gnnnh)
> - *Rarities *(defined as birds that eBird flags as rare *throughout
> the year*): 58
> - *Rarities first found by me: *8 (blue grosbeak, pigeon guillemot,
> parasitic jaeger, pectoral sandpiper, black scoter, Brewer’s sparrow,
> Costa’s hummingbird, bar-tailed godwit)
> - *Misses* (i.e. reviewer-confirmed species seen by others in
> Alameda): Only 14, which is wild to me, and almost all were flyovers,
> feeder visitors, one-hit wonders, or birds whose records were initially
> withheld.
>
> I don’t think you can really compare people’s numbers since everyone has
> their own rules for their lists. For the sake of transparency, here are
> mine:
>
>
> - *The list reflects your position. *Some folks only count birds that
> are physically *in the county*; I’m in the camp that counts the birds
> they see* from the county. *This is consistent with eBird’s guidelines
> but more importantly, it better reflects what I think birding is about.
> Censusing birds within an abstract, human, geopolitical boundary is,
> frankly, *not it*. For me, birding is an act of extending your senses
> as far as possible to appreciate the living world around you. As such, an
> egocentric frame of reference just makes more sense. You plant yourself in
> place and watch the birds as they go where they like. (People who feel
> differently can dock harlequin duck from my total, and potentially other
> seawatched birds.)
> - *No playback. *If birders near me ask to use it, I won’t object, but
> I won’t use it myself. Birds are a gift, and playback feels like greedily
> snatching that gift instead of positioning yourself to receive it.
> - *Heard-only counts. *Birding is a multisensory affair, and there are
> many species I’d rather hear than see. But I try to get a recording of all
> heard-only birds to check the IDs. Merlin is helpful, but confirms nothing.
> HO birds this year included common poorwill, black rail, winter wren,
> yellow-breasted chat, and owls: northern pygmy, northern saw-whet, and
> western screech.
> - *Try to get proper documentation. *No to written description,
> sketches, or anything else that is first processed by your senses, fallible
> and bias-prone as they are. Yes to photos and recordings.
> - *All reports confirmed by eBird reviewers. *Self-explanatory. Thanks
> to the reviewers, and especially to Teale Fristoe for tirelessly keeping
> the county data’s shiny.
> - *Usual eBird rules:* No dead birds, escapees, or exotics. I don’t
> count the recurring Swinhoe’s white-eyes of Creekside Park even though they
> count in my heart. And I don’t count hybrids even though, as Megan
> Jankowski says, they should count three times.
>
> Huge thanks to everyone who I spent time in the field with; friends in my
> groupchats; the many people who found cool rarities (with a special
> shout-out to Sharon Jue who found *so many*); everyone who shared reports
> of East Bay birds and especially people who did so quickly; and every
> single person who has worked to conserve the places that we and the birds
> rely on.
>
>
>
> On that final note, and in the spirit of giving back to nature as much as
> we take from it, I have donated $5 per species to the Golden Gate Bird
> Alliance.
>
>
>
> Happy new year, everyone. Let hope, as always, be the thing with feathers.
>
>
>
> - E
>
>
>
>
>
> And now, the birds:
>
>
>
> 1. Snow goose
> 2. Ross’s goose
> 3. Greater white-fronter goose
> 4. Brant
> 5. Cackling goose
> 6. Canada goose
> 7. Tundra swan
> 8. Wood duck
> 9. Blue-winged teal
> 10. Cinnamon teal
> 11. Northern shoveler
> 12. Gadwall
> 13. Eurasian wigeon
> 14. American wigeon
> 15. Mallard
> 16. Northern pintail
> 17. Green-winged teal
> 18. Canvasback
> 19. Redhead
> 20. Ring-necked duck
> 21. Tufted duck
> 22. Greater scaup
> 23. Lesser scaup
> 24. Harlequin duck
> 25. Surf scoter
> 26. White-winged scoter
> 27. Black scoter
> 28. Long-tailed duck
> 29. Bufflehead
> 30. Common goldeneye
> 31. Barrow’s goldeneye
> 32. Hooded merganser
> 33. Common merganser
> 34. Red-breasted merganser
> 35. Ruddy duck
> 36. California quail
> 37. Wild turkey
> 38. Ring-necked pheasant
> 39. Rock pigeon
> 40. Band-tailed pigeon
> 41. Eurasian collared-dove
> 42. Mourning dove
> 43. Common poorwill
> 44. Vaux’s swift
> 45. White-throated swift
> 46. Black-chinned hummingbird
> 47. Anna’s hummingbird
> 48. Costa’s hummingbird
> 49. Calliope hummingbird
> 50. Rufous hummingbird
> 51. Allen’s hummingbird
> 52. Ridgway’s rail
> 53. Virginia rail
> 54. Sora
> 55. Common gallinule
> 56. American coot
> 57. Black rail
> 58. Black-necked stilt
> 59. American avocet
> 60. Black oystercatcher
> 61. Black-bellied plover
> 62. Pacific golden-plover
> 63. Killdeer
> 64. Semipalmated plover
> 65. Snowy plover
> 66. Hudsonian whimbrel
> 67. Long-billed curlew
> 68. Bar-tailed godwit
> 69. Marbled godwit
> 70. Short-billed dowitcher
> 71. Long-billed dowitcher
> 72. Wilson’s snipe
> 73. Wilson’s phalarope
> 74. Red-necked phalarope
> 75. Spotted sandpiper
> 76. Solitary sandpiper
> 77. Lesser yellowlegs
> 78. Willet
> 79. Greater yellowlegs
> 80. Ruddy turnstone
> 81. Black turnstone
> 82. Red knot
> 83. Surfbird
> 84. Ruff
> 85. Sharp-tailed sandpiper
> 86. Sanderling
> 87. Dunlin
> 88. Rock sandpiper
> 89. Baird’s sandpiper
> 90. Least sandpiper
> 91. Pectoral sandpiper
> 92. Western sandpiper
> 93. Parasitic jaeger
> 94. Pigeon guillemot
> 95. Common murre
> 96. Bonaparte’s gull
> 97. Heermann’s gull
> 98. Short-billed gull
> 99. Ring-billed gull
> 100. Western gull
> 101. American herring gull
> 102. Glaucous gull
> 103. Lesser black-backed gull
> 104. California gull
> 105. Glaucous-winged gull
> 106. Iceland gull
> 107. Black skimmer
> 108. Least tern
> 109. Caspian tern
> 110. Forster’s tern
> 111. Common tern
> 112. Elegant tern
> 113. Pied-billed grebe
> 114. Horned grebe
> 115. Red-necked grebe
> 116. Eared grebe
> 117. Western grebe
> 118. Clark’s grebe
> 119. Red-throated loon
> 120. Paciifc loon
> 121. Common loon
> 122. Yellow-billed loon
> 123. Leach’s storm-petrel
> 124. Cocos booby
> 125. Brandt’s cormorant
> 126. Pelagic cormorant
> 127. Double-crested cormorant
> 128. American bittern
> 129. Black-crowned night heron
> 130. Snowy egret
> 131. Green heron
> 132. Great egret
> 133. Great blue heron
> 134. American white pelican
> 135. Brown pelican
> 136. Turkey vulture
> 137. Osprey
> 138. White-tailed kite
> 139. Golden eagle
> 140. Sharp-shinned hawk
> 141. Cooper’s hawk
> 142. Northern harrier
> 143. Bald eagle
> 144. Red-shouldered hawk
> 145. Swainson’s hawk
> 146. Red-tailed hawk
> 147. Ferruginous hawk
> 148. American barn owl
> 149. Western screech-owl
> 150. Great horned owl
> 151. Northern pygmy- owl
> 152. Burrowing owl
> 153. Long-eared owl
> 154. Short-eared owl
> 155. Northern saw-whet owl
> 156. Belted kingfisher
> 157. Red-naped sapsucker
> 158. Red-breasted sapsucker
> 159. Acorn woodpecker
> 160. Downy woodpecker
> 161. Nuttall’s woodpecker
> 162. Hairy woodpecker
> 163. Pileated woodpecker
> 164. Northern flicker
> 165. American kestrel
> 166. Merlin
> 167. Peregrine falcon
> 168. Prairie falcon
> 169. Olive-sided flycatcher
> 170. Western wood-pewee
> 171. Willow flycatcher
> 172. Hammond’s flycatcher
> 173. Western flycatcher
> 174. Black phoebe
> 175. Say’s phoebe
> 176. Vermilion flycatcher
> 177. Ash-throated flycatcher
> 178. Tropical kingbird
> 179. Cassin’s kingbird
> 180. Western kingbird
> 181. Hutton’s vireo
> 182. Cassin’s vireo
> 183. Western warbling vireo
> 184. Loggerhead shrike
> 185. Steller’s jay
> 186. California scrub-jay
> 187. Yellow-billed magpie
> 188. American crow
> 189. Common raven
> 190. Chestnut-backed chickadee
> 191. Oak titmouse
> 192. Horned lark
> 193. Tree swallow
> 194. Violet-green swallow
> 195. Northern rough-winged swallow
> 196. Barn swallow
> 197. Cliff swallow
> 198. Bushtit
> 199. Wrentit
> 200. Ruby-crowned kinglet
> 201. Golden-crowned kinglet
> 202. White-breasted nuthatch
> 203. Pygmy nuthatch
> 204. Red-breasted nuthatch
> 205. Brown creeper
> 206. Blue-gray gnatcatcher
> 207. Rock wren
> 208. Canyon wren
> 209. Northern house wren
> 210. Pacific wren
> 211. Winter wren
> 212. Marsh wren
> 213. Bewick’s wren
> 214. European starling
> 215. California thrasher
> 216. Sage thrasher
> 217. Northern mockingbird
> 218. Western bluebird
> 219. Mountain bluebird
> 220. Townsend’s solitaire
> 221. Varied thrush
> 222. Swainson’s thrush
> 223. Hermit thrush
> 224. American robin
> 225. Cedar waxwing
> 226. Phainopepla
> 227. Scaly-breasted munia
> 228. House sparrow
> 229. American pipit
> 230. House finch
> 231. Purple finch
> 232. Pine siskin
> 233. Lesser goldfinch
> 234. Lawrence’s goldfinch
> 235. American goldfinch
> 236. Lapland longspur
> 237. Snow bunting
> 238. Grasshopper sparrow
> 239. Chipping sparrow
> 240. Clay-colored sparrow
> 241. Brewer’s sparrow
> 242. Lark sparrow
> 243. Fox sparrow
> 244. Dark-eyed junco
> 245. White-crowned sparrow
> 246. Golden-crowned sparrow
> 247. White-throated sparrow
> 248. Bell’s sparrow
> 249. Nelson’s sparrow
> 250. Savannah sparrow
> 251. Song sparrow
> 252. Lincoln’s sparrow
> 253. Swamp sparrow
> 254. California towhee
> 255. Rufous-crowned sparrow
> 256. Green-tailed towhee
> 257. Spotted towhee
> 258. Yellow-breasted chat
> 259. Yellow-headed blackbird
> 260. Western meadowlark
> 261. Hooded oriole
> 262. Bullock’s oriole
> 263. Red-winged blackbird
> 264. Tricolored blackbird
> 265. Brown-headed cowbird
> 266. Brewer’s blackbird
> 267. Great-tailed grackle
> 268. Northern waterthrush
> 269. Black-and-white warbler
> 270. Tennessee warbler
> 271. Orange-crowned warbler
> 272. Nashville warbler
> 273. MacGillivray’s warbler
> 274. Common yellowthroat
> 275. American redstart
> 276. Northern yellow warbler
> 277. Chestnut-sided warbler
> 278. Blackpoll warbler
> 279. Palm warbler
> 280. Yellow-rumped warbler
> 281. Black-throated gray warbler
> 282. Townsend’s warbler
> 283. Hermit warbler
> 284. Black-throated green warbler
> 285. Wilson’s warbler
> 286. Western tanager
> 287. Black-headed grosbeak
> 288. Blue grosbeak
> 289. Lazuli bunting
>
>
>
>
>
>
