Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!lindy!news
From: HF.GXS@forsythe.stanford.edu (Gail Smithson)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Spring Migration (was: Re: Long Point Swans )
Message-ID: <2470@lindy.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 21 Mar 89 21:13:10 GMT
Sender: news@lindy.Stanford.EDU (News Service)
Distribution: usa
Lines: 29

Here at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, I had a
surprise this morning.  As I was walking through the Quad (short for
quadrangle.  This is a group of buildings all about 100 years old
which were the original buildings for the university.  They are
grouped in a rectangle with a large courtyard in between which is
mostly cobblestones with several large planter boxes with various
large trees and bushes inside) I spotted a duck up in one of the
palm trees, perched just below the palm fronds on left over stems of
fallen fronds.  An acorn woodpecker was dive bombing it.  The only
ducks I have seen in the Quad before was a pair of mallards on the
ground in the planter boxes.  Closer inspection of the treed duck
indentified it as a male wood duck!  And the female was just on the
other side of the palm.  I was quite surprised to see the wood ducks
there as this is not the habitat they are usually found in.  There
is not open water nearby, save for Lake Lagunita which is about a
mile away and is dry most of the year.  They soon flew off.  I
imagine they came in at night or the very early morning and were
resting or checking out the trees for nesting cavities.

The cliff swallows arrived back at Stanford this weekend.  They
greeted me with their chitterings as I came to work yesterday.  They
have a nesting colony here and were already breeding.

At the weekend I went up the coast with my Audubon group to Sonoma
County and we found a lek of Blue Grouse doing their strutting.  We
heard several males doing their low calls, actually saw two males,
but no females.

Gail Smithson