Hiking at Byxbee Park - with Hawks!
Jan. 25th, 2022 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerLast weekend we managed to get out for hiking both days. After Saturday's slightly more ambitious tromp at Edgewood Park I felt like taking it a bit easier on Sunday, especially because one of my feet was still hurting from pushing a bit too hard at Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge the weekend before. We ruled out the more strenuous, more vertical hikes on our short list and came up with an old favorite. Well, not an old favorite; we only started making it a regular hiking haunt a few years ago. It's Byxbee Park, in the baylands of Palo Alto less than 10 miles away.
Byxbee Park is a curious location on the edge of town where land meets water. There are sloughs and ponds on three sides of it. In the middle is a slight hill. It's actually man-made... it covers up an old landfill! Oh, and also next to the park is a sewage treatment plant. Does this sound like some kind of joke, putting a city park next to the dump and the sewer? Well, partly it is, and partly it isn't— because it's actually nice.
The dump hill is actually fun to climb up because with even its 25' or so elevation above water level of the bay, you gain a completely different perspective on the bay than you see at 5' elevation atop the levees.
On this hike I made a point of bringing all the lenses for my nice camera; particularly my "bird shooter" telephoto lens. "Maybe we'll see some cool birds this time," Hawk and I agreed... meaning things other than the various kinds of ducks, rails, and geese we always see at Byxbee. And sure enough, as soon as I stepped onto the trail I saw what looked like a bird of prey swooping back and forth, low over the hillside.
The predator kept working the area as we hiked along the first levee and then up the hill. For a moment we wondered if it might be a turkey vulture, as it had a similar wing shape. But it showed itself to be a capable flyer, not a clumsy one, as it swooped so close to the ground in long power glides.
I took several pictures of the hawk with my telephoto lens but it would take until I got home and had time to look up this fast-moving bird that I could identify it. It's a northern harrier.
The main giveaway for norther harriers— the thing that differentiates them from other hawks— is that white patch at the base of the tail. Aside from that, other indicators are the way it holds its wings up in a slight "V" shape when gliding and its flat face. Its face is actually similar to an owl's.
When a northern harrier is gliding close to the ground like this, it's both looking and listening for prey in the tall grass. Its prey are generally small ground mammals: voles, rats, squirrels. It'll catch songbirds, shorebirds, and small waterfowl, too. Generally it won't catch one of these...
...though on occasion northern harriers do kill jackrabbits. They'd have to be kind of desperate— or maybe striving to feed a nest of growing young— because it's bigger prey than they usually take. They really can't even kill it with their talons. So they drag it to water and drown it. This guy (or gal) above is taking a chance with that harrier on patrol overhead. That's probably why s/he is running so fast.
Spotting the northern harrier was cool. This is habitat, marshland, is home to these birds; but we've never seen one before in many, many trips to this and other nearby bayland parks. Better yet, it wasn't the only unusual hawk sighting.
Up atop a "sculpture" (above) we spotted another bird that looks hawkish. Yes, it's a tiny bird all the way up there; yet we looked at it and right away asked ourselves, "Is that a kestrel?"
The birdshooter made answering that question easy:
YES, that's TOTALLY an American kestrel. We could tell even without the telephoto lens because of the bird's shape, its orange back, and the way it flew fast. I mean, when this bird flew from one perch to another, its wings flapped 3x as fast as you'd expect for a bird its size.
Kestrels are falcons. They're the smallest of the falco genus. They don't have the great speed of peregrine falcons, the fastest animal in the world; nor the strength of even a merlin. But their small size and rapid wing movements give them considerable maneuverability. The way this bird surprised us with how fast it could leap off a perch (the phrase "like a bat out of hell" comes to mind) and fly 100m away is how it surprises its prey. Kestrels prey on a variety of species from insects to small mammals and reptiles to small birds. You don't want to be a sparrow when this guy's around. His nickname, after all, is sparrowhawk.
Update: Keep reading with the next entry, Wildflowers in Byxbee Park.
Byxbee Park is a curious location on the edge of town where land meets water. There are sloughs and ponds on three sides of it. In the middle is a slight hill. It's actually man-made... it covers up an old landfill! Oh, and also next to the park is a sewage treatment plant. Does this sound like some kind of joke, putting a city park next to the dump and the sewer? Well, partly it is, and partly it isn't— because it's actually nice.
The dump hill is actually fun to climb up because with even its 25' or so elevation above water level of the bay, you gain a completely different perspective on the bay than you see at 5' elevation atop the levees.
On this hike I made a point of bringing all the lenses for my nice camera; particularly my "bird shooter" telephoto lens. "Maybe we'll see some cool birds this time," Hawk and I agreed... meaning things other than the various kinds of ducks, rails, and geese we always see at Byxbee. And sure enough, as soon as I stepped onto the trail I saw what looked like a bird of prey swooping back and forth, low over the hillside.
The predator kept working the area as we hiked along the first levee and then up the hill. For a moment we wondered if it might be a turkey vulture, as it had a similar wing shape. But it showed itself to be a capable flyer, not a clumsy one, as it swooped so close to the ground in long power glides.
I took several pictures of the hawk with my telephoto lens but it would take until I got home and had time to look up this fast-moving bird that I could identify it. It's a northern harrier.
The main giveaway for norther harriers— the thing that differentiates them from other hawks— is that white patch at the base of the tail. Aside from that, other indicators are the way it holds its wings up in a slight "V" shape when gliding and its flat face. Its face is actually similar to an owl's.
When a northern harrier is gliding close to the ground like this, it's both looking and listening for prey in the tall grass. Its prey are generally small ground mammals: voles, rats, squirrels. It'll catch songbirds, shorebirds, and small waterfowl, too. Generally it won't catch one of these...
...though on occasion northern harriers do kill jackrabbits. They'd have to be kind of desperate— or maybe striving to feed a nest of growing young— because it's bigger prey than they usually take. They really can't even kill it with their talons. So they drag it to water and drown it. This guy (or gal) above is taking a chance with that harrier on patrol overhead. That's probably why s/he is running so fast.
Spotting the northern harrier was cool. This is habitat, marshland, is home to these birds; but we've never seen one before in many, many trips to this and other nearby bayland parks. Better yet, it wasn't the only unusual hawk sighting.
Up atop a "sculpture" (above) we spotted another bird that looks hawkish. Yes, it's a tiny bird all the way up there; yet we looked at it and right away asked ourselves, "Is that a kestrel?"
The birdshooter made answering that question easy:
YES, that's TOTALLY an American kestrel. We could tell even without the telephoto lens because of the bird's shape, its orange back, and the way it flew fast. I mean, when this bird flew from one perch to another, its wings flapped 3x as fast as you'd expect for a bird its size.
Kestrels are falcons. They're the smallest of the falco genus. They don't have the great speed of peregrine falcons, the fastest animal in the world; nor the strength of even a merlin. But their small size and rapid wing movements give them considerable maneuverability. The way this bird surprised us with how fast it could leap off a perch (the phrase "like a bat out of hell" comes to mind) and fly 100m away is how it surprises its prey. Kestrels prey on a variety of species from insects to small mammals and reptiles to small birds. You don't want to be a sparrow when this guy's around. His nickname, after all, is sparrowhawk.
Update: Keep reading with the next entry, Wildflowers in Byxbee Park.
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Date: 2022-01-26 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-29 02:03 am (UTC)