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Once the festival finishes, Half Moon Bay prepares for the Christmas season.  You can visit with Santa, go on a pony ride, and pick up a tree.  The Christmas season has officially begun.  On the way home from birding today, I noticed that 20% of the cars had a tree on top.

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So today was a good day to get off the coast and away from the Christmas activities.  I headed to the Baylands in Palo Alto.  The Baylands is a group of marshes that are connected to freshwater inside the Bay.  If you ever want to see ducks and geese, go to the Baylands.  I saw eight new birds today.

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This post is about the American Avocet.  After almost a year of trying to find him, I saw my first one last week.  Today, I saw even more!  Isn’t it funny how that works?  It was the same thing with Black Phoebes.  It took me forever to see one and now I see them almost every week.  In fact, here:

I saw several today, and captured the best picture yet.

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Avocets have grey plumage in the winter.  During breeding season, the head turns brown.

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They find food by placing their bills underneath the water and moving side-to-side to filter out the crustaceans and aquatic insects.

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They also tip-up into the water to find food, although it’s more rare than their filtering method.

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The females have a bill that is more upturned than the male’s.  I’m guessing that the Avocet on the right is female.

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They’re very social birds.

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When they walk, the movement is so delicate.  He picks up a foot and lets it glide into the water, almost like a dancer.

The seals were lounging about.

They looks exhausted!

They would look up at me with sleepy faces, and then their heads would flop back down.

I like this thoughtful expression.  His face reminds me of a cat with those big whiskers and almond-shaped eyes.

I made my way to the marshes, which were full of birds.  I saw a little sparrow on a log and approached.

This is a Song Sparrow.  They’re extremely common.  Many birders are unimpressed by their appearance, but I really like them.  They let you get close and they have lovely songs.

The easiest way to distinguish between different types of sparrows is to look at the pattern on their chest and head.  The Song Sparrow has dark-brown spots on his chest, with a prominent spot in the middle, and white markings on his head below and above the eyes.

Other sparrows will have yellow markings above the eyes or on the wings, or a colored patch in the center of his head directly above the nose.

Black Phoebes were everywhere today.  I saw the first one on a sign post.

The second one was catching bugs.  You can still see it in his mouth!

It was almost as if the phoebes were posing for me.  The next one was in branches backed by a blue sky.

Then he flew into the brush.

Then on a bush.

Then, I swear he asked me if he should pose on a man-made object to serve as social commentary about our interference with nature.

Then he went back into the brush, but positioned himself carefully so that I could see the white tips of his feathers.

Then some more bushes.

In case I wanted a brighter background, he flew over to some driftwood.

And back on a post.

I actually left out several other places where he sat.  Such an obliging little bird.

Before last August I had never seen a black phoebe. Now I see them everywhere: Pescadero, Moss Beach, Hayward, and San Francisco. I can’t decide if I’m better at spotting them or we’re in phoebe season. My field guide is rather unhelpful as it states that they’re locally uncommon to very common year round. Um, yeah, thanks.

They’re very hard to photograph because they move around so frequently and they don’t like you to get too close. This post is the culmination of months of photographs.

Black phoebes eat all types of insects. Julie Zickefoose has a touching series of posts about raising baby phoebes and teaching them to eat that starts here. I recommend Zickefoose’s blog, if you’re not familiar with her work. She writes about birding, travel, and her dog and she’s in the process of writing a new book!

The phoebes live near water, including the ocean and marshes. In these pictures the phoebe is sitting in some branches built into the bluffs.

They’re so adorable!

why do you keep looking at me?

They’re typically seen on top of poles.

The best was when I saw the phoebe catch a moth and eat it. He looked very satisfied.