Date: 8/12/26 10:11 pm From: Alexander Henry via groups.io <awhenry...> Subject: Re: [EBB-Sightings] BELATED REPORT: White-eyed Vireo on 6/25/2026 at Shadow Cliffs Regional Park (Heard only / Recorded)
Wild find, great bird! Definitely strange how the Livermore Valley seems
like such a “good” spot for them relative to pretty much the entire Bay
Area except coastal Marin.
Makes me wonder about the potential of places like Patterson Pass, Shadow
Cliffs, etc for other southeast songbird vagrants like Hooded Warbler,
Northern Parula, Yellow-throated Vireo, Yellow-throated Warbler, god
willing maybe a Kentucky! Give it enough decades, perhaps… definitely worth
checking these traps into late spring and early summer, even if the
probability of something this good is extremely low on any given visit!
Basically the whole eastern half or so of Alameda county could always use
more coverage, at least relative to the western half the of the county the
population density is lower and while there’s a handful of good dedicated
birders finding great stuff, the ratio of birders to land area is just a
lot lower.
Congrats, that’s a super rare bird and also is another data point
supporting a peculiar and fascinating pattern. I wonder if anyone might
know why or have any ideas as to why this pattern exists, or if you think
it’s just a small sample size and stochasticity.
On Wednesday, August 12, 2026, Akira So via groups.io <akiradotnet=
<gmail.com...> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> Sorry about this being a belated report, as it is now too late to chase
> it. But I recorded vocalization of a very likely White-eyed Vireo at Shadow
> Cliffs on June 25, 2026. (~7 weeks ago.) The recording can be found at
> below eBird checklist link.
>
> https://ebird.org/checklist/S382746025 >
> In the field at the time, the Merlin app was unable to suggest any ID, and
> I was unable to locate it visually. Today, I thought to try the BirdNET app
> (the desktop version, not the new "BirdNET Live" app for smartphones). And
> it gave me an ID as White-eyed Vireo, giving me confidence scores of ~95%.
>
> In case you wondered (perhaps to look for it in future years for possible
> return visits), the approximate GPS coordinate of the observation location
> was 37.668485, -121.848638 - in the western part of the park along the
> arroyo. The time of observation was ~9:30 am. (The recording was made at
> 9:35am.)
>
> This is the first White-eyed Vireo record for this location as far as I am
> aware. But there have been several eBird records in this general area of
> the East Bay, including those from May 2004 (Tassajara Creek Regional Park,
> Tassjara EBRP Land Bank) and May 2020 (Patterson Pass).
>
> Again, it is too late to chase it now, but mentioning it for future
> reference.
>
> Good birding,
> Akira
>
> Akira So
> Pleasanton, CA
>
