Hiking the Sunnyvale Baylands

Although unexpected car shopping took over our plans much of this weekend we did get out for a hike Sunday afternoon. As we were short on time we kept it local and went for a walk in the Sunnyvale baylands 4 miles from home.

The northern edge of Sunnyvale on the San Francisco Bay is a latticework of marshes, sloughs, ponds, and evaporation pools. The trailhead we started at Sunday is actually at the city water treatment plant. ...That's right, the sewer. Next to it is the dump! We parked next to a row of sewage tanks, applied sunscreen, and headed out the first levee along a slough.



In a place like this it can be easy to get distracted by the sights of smells of civilization and just focus on the exercise: putting one foot in front of the other. But once you get past the minor bad smell in the area (much of which is actually the smell from the bay with its plants, wildlife, water, and minerals) there's a lot of beauty. There are also a lot of birds.

As we walked out the levee pictured above a pair of photographers staring down into the tall grasses along the channel drew our attention to a pair of colorful songbirds perched on marsh plants. A red-tail hawk soared overhead and landed atop that high voltage tower. And as I rounded the bend I spotted deep in the reeds this black-crowned night heron:



This guy (or gal? I'm not sure) was standing at the mouth of an outflow tube. Herons are fish eaters; he (she?) likely figured it was a good plan to wait for food to come out the chute than have to fly around the ponds looking for it... and risk getting chased by that red-tail hawk hunting for its own next meal!

Spotting the night heron lurking deep in the shade was cool because they're rare to see. They're native to the area but don't grow in huge numbers, and they're active primarily in the twilight when they're hard to see. This is the first I've seen here. I called over the bird watchers, and they were excited. More commonly seen birds here include grebes, cormorants, and egrets (called great white herons in some places). Then, of course, there are ducks and geese; the area's lousy with them.

There are lots of paths you can walk or bike in the baylands area, navigating around the maze of levees. For Sunday's hike we picked a 4-mile loop that goes out around one of the ponds.



Distant views open up as you get out into the fringes of the bay. That's because once you're away from totally solid land there are extremely few things taller than about 8 feet above the water; less at high tide. In the picture above you're looking straight across the SF Bay to Monument Peak, 9 miles away and elevation 2,594', above Fremont.

Update: continued in Part 2!

Birds in the Baylands (Sunday Hiking, part 2)

There's so much to see in the Sunnyvale baylands— once you get past the sight and smell of the fact that it's adjacent to a sewage treatment plant and not one but two dumps— that I split the trip into two blogs. I already posted Part 1 (see previous entry)... and that was just the first 1/4 mile of the hike! There was plenty more to see as we hiked a 4 mile loop.



I mentioned we always see egrets in this area. Well, not in hordes, but we usually see a few each time we visit. This one (above) was somewhat elusive. It got spooked every time we approached within 25 feet. Fortunately I had my good camera with my "birdshooter" telephoto lens ready. (I also used the birdshooter to get that closeup of the black-crowned night heron in the previous blog entry.)

Speaking of birds that do or don't appear in hordes.... Ducks, geese, and seagulls definitely appear in hordes out here.



This pic shows geese and seagulls. The ducks were avoiding this gaggle for some reason. Geese are bolder than egrets, so these let us approach closer before waddling off the trail, honking indignantly.

BTW, in the background of the pic above you see the hangars Two and Three at Moffett Field in Mountain View. They date from WWII. Aircraft were stationed here, and then tested here, through the Cold War. They're now historical buildings because they're actually wood structures and are among the world's largest freestanding structures.

Wiseguys among the crowd might ask, "So, if there's Hanger Two and Hangar Three, what about Hangar One?"

Easy. Just look slightly to the right:



Hangar One has been partially disassembled; it's that skeletal steel structure appearing like a ghost in the distance. It was built in the early 1930s to house Blimps (dirigibles; lighter-than-air ships) when they were used for wartime reconnaissance. Hangar One has its own Wikipedia page.

These three hangars have long been visual landmarks in the South Bay. Especially before the panels were removed from Hangar One about 10 years ago (they were constructed with hazardous materials) Hangar One was one of the most identifiable manmade features visible from mountains around the area.

Nowadays Google has a contract with the government to operate a small fleet of corporate jets there.

But hey, before I got off onto history and blimps and Google, I was talking about birds. And I promised ducks. Here's a 12-pack!



This looks like a good mama duck, right? She led her ducklings around the slough. Then she climbed up atop a small buoy they couldn't manage.

Mama ducks actually suck.



We wrapped up the hike as we looped back in close to the mainland. At the start of this hike I noted that it's next to the city's sewage treatment plant and a dump. Actually it's next to two dumps. The low, wide brown hill in the pic above is one of the dump areas. It's mostly covered over with dirt now and plumbed with pipes to prevent explosive buildup of methane gas from waste decomposing underneath. The slightly taller mounds just behind it are gravel quarries.

If I hadn't told you you're looking at a dump and a quarry you'd have thought it's a nice picture, right? Well, it still is. In beauty I walk.

Mom Got the Shot

My mom got her shot of the Coronavirus vaccine recently. Up until a few weeks ago she was dead-set against it, citing various conspiracy theories from the fever swamps of conservative TV "news". It turns out the big stumbling block for her was having to deal with anything involving a computer to get it. She explained that while she was driving the main road through town recently she saw a sign in front of the recreation center advertising the vaccine and encouraging people to stop in to make an appointment. Once she was able to get a shot in the good ol' 1950s way— no searching online, no using computer, not even having to make a phone call, just go to the right place— she did it.

It's tempting to point out this is an example of how expecting people to use online mechanisms is unfair to the elderly and the poor, who may lack skills or resources to use the Internet. It's tempting but not entirely accurate because my mom lives with one of my sisters, who is Internet savvy and begged Mom for months to let her set up an appointment for her. Mom is in the sad zone where lack of computer skills intersects with belief in conspiracy theories. I believe she looked at it as, "If you can't get the vaccine just by walking into a clinic, it's a scam and it's not important."

Either way, I'm glad she's on Team Vax now.