Back in San Francisco

Don Edwards Wildlife Area

We are back in chilly San Francisco. To top off a great birding trip, we birded the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge at the southern end of San Francisco Bay. We parked the rental car and walked up a steep hill to the headquarters. From there, one could see a fascinating collection of birding habitats. There was a large salt marsh on one side, rocky outcroppings around us and large mud flats and tidal pools. And, seemingly, birds everywhere.

We drove alongside the tidal pools and saw the Northern Shovelers (Anas clypeata) scrapping things out of the water with their shovel like beaks. We saw other ducks dabbling, turning up and feeding off the bottom of the tidal pool. All you could see was their cute little butts in the air.

The salt marsh is made up of Cordgrass, which looks like spears of straight grass, kind of like Saw Grass on steroids. There was something else called Pickle Weed, which is a salt-tolerant evergreen shrub. There is a small mouse in the salt marsh that can drink salt water. Interesting factoid.

Golden Crowned Sparrow

We saw a lot of birds today, but the one that got both of us excited was the Golden Crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia atricapilla). This is a large sparrow that migrates up and down the Pacific coast. They summer in Alaska and winter in Mexico. We found it on its migratory journey south, when it stopped at the Don Edwards Wildlife Area. Another “Life Bird” for us, meaning that we had never seen this bird before in our entire lives.

Golden Crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia atricapilla)

Chinatown

We went to Chinatown for a fun lunch. We chose a Chinese restaurant and were sitting there eating, when a large, noisy Chinese parade started up out on the street. This was a cultural celebration of Taiwanese Independence, celebrating the anniversary of the fall of the Qing Dynasty in China and the installation of the Chinese Nationalist Party in Taiwan. There were musicians, beauty queens, dignitaries, ROTC type soldiers, banners, small individual dragons and finally one long, huge golden dragon with about twenty people inside of it. Very impressive. One lady left the parade to offer Robert a piece of hard candy.

After lunch, we found a Chinese jewelry store and Berry bought some green jewelry made from jade.

We found a Chinese Book Store and Robert bought a book called “High Level Xiangqi”, a book about Chinese Chess.

Our vacation has been great fun. The Golden Crowned Sparrow in the salt marsh was just more icing on the cake. We got back to the Holiday Inn and began packing everything to fly home. Robert took a needed nap.

Robert and Berry

photos courtesy of wikipedia, dereilainn