Walked the Coyote Creek Trail from the Morgan Hill parking lot to the first set of Ogier Ponds. This is a fairly normal pattern for us, so typically I will only give the end point of this walk, and not the starting point.
Observations today include: an immature Golden Eagle flying very high with a Turkey Vulture (hereafter TV), near the creek and just past where 101 crosses the trail. We have seen one or two Golden Eagles at this same place on many occasions this year. In fact we have seen so many Golden Eagles this year that we cannot decide if we just were not looking hard enough in the past, perhaps always assuming that they were all TVs, or if this is an especially rich year for the eagles.
Photos were useless today on this bird for anything but identification as the bird was so high in the sky.
The Redtail Hawks are starting to regularly perch on or around the Sycamores that have the nests from last year. We will be watching very closely to see if they reuse the same nests. Of course we cannot know for certain if these are the same hawks from last year, but my intuition says that they are. The hawk perching in the first nest that we come to on the trail, just past where we see the Golden Eagle, is very large. We think it is the female from last year that nested there who was very large. Then there is the pair that nested closer to the airfield, again hanging out every evening near their nest from last year. We named them John and Yoko last year, based on their proclivity towards mating in public, and Yoko has a very distinctive wild hairdo. Yoko is also quite large, and clearly larger than her mate. In the past week we have seen one or both of these hawks persistently in the sycamores near last year's nest. As is so often the case, one Redtail was perched in the Sycamore directly opposite the parking area for the airfield. A pair of Kestrels, male and female were harassing this Redtail, leading us to believe that this Kestrel pair is planning to nest nearby.
Posted pictures of a lovely Great Blue Heron that was near the bridge that crosses the creek, and the Redtail that was being harassed on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkperson/ and including the Redtail here.
The ponds closest to the airfield had very few species today. Mostly coots, ruddy ducks, and scaups. The Hooded Merganser pair was still there, as was a Gadwall pair, both of these on the more hidden pond next to the airfield. No sign of the American Wigeons, the Cinnamon Teals, or the Green Winged Teals.
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