A group of 18 birders were greeted by cloudy skies Sunday morning in the parking lot by the pond at Jericho. Looking over the ducks in the pond we found Mallards (of course), some Canada Geese, a lone male Northern Shoveler, and several Buffleheads. An interesting way of looking at duck identification, for the males especially,  by looking for where the white areas are on different species was talked about. At one point, a flyover flock of Canada Geese had two smaller Cackling Geese trailing them. Red-winged Blackbirds called and sang from the cattails. A particularly extroverted male blasted his song at loud volume at close range from a shrub beside our group. A low flying adult Bald Eagle stirred up the ducks on the pond and we moved along.

Female Mallard

Out on the large grassy field a group of about 70 American Wigeons were grazing. There wasn’t a Eurasian Wigeon in the flock today though. Skirting the northern edge of the pond, we found 3 then 4 Great Blue Herons in the trees across from us. A male Anna’s Hummingbird sat up in a shrub giving us nice looks but the low light didn’t show off his plumage too much.

As we made our way to the beach we could see a small group of birds on the water which turned out to be six Horned Grebes. We also spotted several Red-breasted Mergansers and a distant flock of Barrow’s Goldeneyes as well. Sitting on buoys and flying by were several Double-crested Cormorants.

Heading back towards the woods, we came across several groups of sparrows. In the first were several immature White-crowned Sparrows, and one Golden-crowned Sparrow. A little further along, more Golden-crowned Sparrows were feeding. A Brown Creeper sang from the trees and was eventually spotted working its way up a tree trunk. Northern Flickers flew about in the trees above us. More sparrows were spotted working the edge of a bramble. A sharp eye found a Spotted Towhee doing its ‘jumping back and forth to stir up bugs’ routine. A discussion of why they did this and other birds that also use this technique to forage started and Fox Sparrows were mentioned. A moment later, a Fox Sparrow doing its jumping thing was seen, illustrating this bug finding method again. Moving along a little further we heard American Goldfinches singing in the trees above us, but couldn’t locate them. While we looked a Ruby-crowned Kinglet appeared, along with some Dark-eyed Juncos. Finally, we spotted the Goldfinches – several females and two males in different stages of molt. One of the males was just starting to turn yellow on its head, while the other had quite a bit of lemon yellow all over its body.

Pushing on into the woods, we could hear a Pacific Wren belting out its frenetic song. Stopping to observe a small flock of Black-capped Chickadees, we found two Chestnut-backed Chickadees with them and a Ruby-crowned Kinglet. A flock of Bushtits was also feeding in the same spot.

Walking the trails at Jericho

As we headed back to the parking lot, a hawk was spotted sitting in one of the Redwoods by the edge of the forest. Getting a better look at it, we determined it was an immature Copper’s Hawk. A discussion of why it wasn’t a Sharp-shinned Hawk ensued.

Folks decided that favorite birds of the day included the Chestnut-backed Chickadees and the American Goldfinches. The rain held off making for a pleasant if cool walk during which we found 33 species. Our eBird list is here. https://ebird.org/checklist/S309794999