Date: 11/12/26 9:29 pm From: lavin_fara via EBB-Sightings <pdunten...> Subject: [EBB-Sightings] Bonaparte's Gull scrum, Loggerhead Shrike for Hayward-Fremont CBC
I couldn’t resist a little light reading, the recent “South Bay Salt Pond Waterbird Surveys September 2023 – May 2024” penned by Nathan Van Schmidt and Amy Parsons [1]. The report covers the ponds around the south bay, from Ravenswood to Alviso to Eden Landing. You can read it straight through, or jump to a section of interest, as I did. And that’s where I read that Bonaparte’s Gulls were found in high numbers in winter on pond NPP1. High tide happened to be at a decent time of day, so I headed out to circumnavigate NP1 and NPP1 on Wednesday. And sure enough, hundreds of Bonaparte’s Gulls were present, this day on NPP1. My clockwise circuit of 14,000+ steps took me past two White-tailed Kites courting, talons locked, one upside-down, spiraling toward the ground. So much drama! And a data point for the California Bird Atlas, documenting breeding behavior. Hundreds of small shorebirds streamed past heading to the east end of NPP1 as I walked west. That’s when I came upon a tight shoulder-to-shoulder mass of Northern Shovelers and Bonaparte’s Gulls packed together on NP1, probing the water. It brought to mind one of Ted Floyd’s How to Know the Birds columns describing the association of Wilson’s Phalaropes and Northern Shovelers. Ted proposed that the Shovelers bring up food for the Phalaropes as they feed and spin [2]. I took out my camera to try to capture video, only to discover the battery was dead, as of course was the back-up battery. I’d have to come back. So on Thursday, on my bike, I did a counterclockwise circuit (which turned out not to be ideal). The Bonaparte’s Gulls and Shovelers were again together, but to get the light behind me I had to ride by them and watch all the Shovelers bolt. Some came back, as in the linked videos [3]. The gulls never left, so perhaps the location was food-rich, and the association of the gulls and Shovelers meant they both liked to forage for the same things, rather than the gulls depending on the Shovelers to bring delectable items to the surface. Carrying on around the ponds, I came to NPP1 where thousands of Dunlin, Black-bellied Plovers, and Western Sandpipers were waiting out the high tide, along with smaller numbers of Red Knots, Dowitchers, Least Sandpipers, and a single Sanderling a bit farther from the bay than usual. Here I couldn’t help but be thankful the professionals contributing to the Waterbird Surveys report had the job of carefully counting big numbers, while I could just enjoy the spectacle. A last highlight was a Loggerhead Shrike on the huge freshwater pipe bordering the area that carries water across the bay to the peninsula. The Shrike was within the Hayward-Fremont Christmas Bird Count circle. Shrikes were formerly found in double digits on that annual count and completely missed for the first time in 2021. Here’s hoping the Shrike stays around for the count.
