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From: mjm@oliven.olivetti.com (Michael Mammoser)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: anyone seen any...
Message-ID: <49339@olivea.atc.olivetti.com>
Date: 4 Sep 90 20:11:54 GMT
References: <34190@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <1990Sep4.192934.19286@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
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	The Labor Day weekend has produced some interesting birds
here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

	On Saturday I received a call from our subregional editor
for American Birds magazine, informing me of a Hudsonian Godwit
that had been found at the Sunnyvale Water Pollution Control Plant.
I hustled out there and discovered that the bird was still being
staked out by the guy who found it. It was allowing excellent views
from a range of 50-100 ft. It was being cooperative to the point of
flying short distances along the channel, displaying all its field
marks, including the underwing pattern.

	On Monday I went to the Moon Glow Dairy overlooking Elkhorn 
Slough, where an impressive array of birds were being seen. They
included numbers of Pectoral and Baird's Sandpipers, a Semipalmated
Sandpiper, a Rufous Necked Stint, a Ruff, and a Buff Breasted
Sandpiper. Unfortunately, by Monday the Ruff had left and the Rufous
Necked Stint and Semipalmated Sandpiper were darn near impossible
to pick out of the thousands of peeps, if they were still there.

	However, it was still an excellent day of birding. The
Pectoral and Baird's Sandpipers were the first I had seen that
season and the Buff Breasted Sandpiper was only the second observation
in my life. I watched a number of Elegant Terns, which I hadn't seen
in a couple of years. A juvenile accipiter kept making sorties out
of the eucalyptus grove, attacking the peeps on the mud flat. This
sparked a twenty minute debate among the birders as to whether it was 
a Cooper's or a Sharpie. A juvenile Peregrine Falcon was much more
successful in picking off a peep. When we first noticed it, the peeps
were already up in the air and the falcon was only about thirty
feet above the ground. It dropped quickly to the ground and landed
on a peep that refused to fly. It took off with its prize and flew
across the slough. A small group of peeps flew with it, just to be
sure that it could find its way out.

	It was an impressive raptor day, the species seen being:
Turkey Vulture, Golden Eagle, Black Shouldered Kite, Northern
Harrier, Cooper's Hawk (?), Red Shouldered Hawk, Red Tailed Hawk,
Osprey, American Kestrel, Peregrine Falcon.

Mike